


With This Ring...

by Chevy



Category: Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Explicit Language, F/M, Fake Marriage, On the Run, Unpleasant reality of hiding from scary things
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-03-27
Updated: 2014-11-20
Packaged: 2018-01-16 11:01:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 18
Words: 35,566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1345048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chevy/pseuds/Chevy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After escaping the prison with Judith Grimes in tow, Daryl and Beth realise that staying on the run with a five month old child is impossible and begin to concentrate on finding a new home. When Daryl is badly hurt, Beth is forced to go to strangers for help and to protect herself, her brother-in-arms and their precious cargo, poses as his young wife.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Safe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After escaping from the prison, Daryl and Beth make the decision to sacrifice their search for their people for the safety of Judith Grimes.

Safe used to mean less. Safe used to be taken for granted. The word was never breathed in the worshipful half-breaths like the space between sobs, like it was now. It had come to mean something that could only truly be taken on faith; faith in the eyes and ears of those who watched over during the pitiful snatches of sleep. Safety was as much a religion as a crucifix now. It had come to mean concrete walls and razor-wire topped fences. Now, safe was the twisted roots of a huge, spreading tree on a rise where Beth crouched as Daryl scanned all around them. She didn’t cry, as much as she wanted to. Her throat was dry and scratchy from screaming. Her eyes stung. Her chest hurt. Her feet ached, and so did her arms from holding the baby so tight. Beth was slender, deceptively strong for her willowy arms, even Before. She’d pulled her weight at the farm, they all had, but malnutrition and constant running and fighting had sapped a little of the easy fitness from her core and replaced it with sinewy muscle in her thin arms. Judith made a whinging sound that made Daryl flinch. Beth silenced her quickly, holding grimy fingers over her tiny, pink little mouth and shushing desperately.

“Did you see anyone else?” she asked the broken silence.

In the murky, starlight-cracked night, Daryl’s face was cast in grey and silver as he turned slightly to look at her. He looked haunted. Then he shook his head, jaw clenched. Beth sniffed and pressed her lips to Judith’s hair.

“I gotta find my sister. And Glenn. And we gotta find Rick and Carl, Daryl. We have to”

“We don’ know where they are, Beth. We don’ know if they’re dead” he snarled, throwing his arm out in that gesture he used at his most frustrated, his angriest.

“Don’t say that!” she pleaded as quietly as she could.

“Fuckin’ Christ, girl! Face tha facts! We got nowhere ta run, nothin’ to run for! Tha’ lil brat there is gunna git us kill’d ‘fore too long an’ there ain’t gunna be nobody to miss us!”

“Shut up! Just shut up Daryl!...please”

A groan bounced off the timber to the east made them both flinch. Judith let out a wail and Daryl swore, lifting his crossbow.

“Hell! Jus’ fuck, c’mon. Go, Beth, we gotta go” They ran.

***

Judith was sick. She had a cough hacking her tiny body that attracted Walkers everywhere they went, and ran hot and then cold, and all Beth and Daryl could do was try and feed her whatever they’d found to eat that day, hold her and crouch in dark corners praying for a reprieve. They’d been running for a week, maybe ten days, about that. Nights and days and hours were starting to blur. At first, they circled the woods and towns around the prison, hoping to find some trace of their people, but their spiral was starting to move further away. Her whinging undulated as Beth bounced her. They were inside a cleared house they’re reached via back roads. Outside was a station wagon that Daryl had hotwired a few towns over, but it was running low on gas. They’d slept in the car a few nights, driven it off the road and covered their tracks. They’d seen men with automatic weapons a few days ago, and hadn’t stopped running since. The sound of Michonne's sword cleaving her father’s spine was still ringing in Beth’s ears.

“We gotta stop runnin’” she said softly as Judith’s little cries quietened.

The little girl was gumming on some late berries squashed from their ride in Daryl’s pocket, purple stains all over her filthy baby face and wrecked clothes. Squatted by the door watching them, Daryl startled slightly and looked at her properly. They’d learned to communicate completely silently sometime in the last four or five days. Beth’s words were the first they’d spoken in at least six.

“Wha’ ‘bout Maggie an’ Glenn?” he grunted, pressing the heels of his hands into his bloodshot eyes hard enough to see stars. When she didn’t say anything, he looked up again. Meeting his gaze, she shrugged.

“We ever do find ‘em I don’t wanna tell ‘em we that...-” Judith cooed and sucked on her berry-stained fingers, wriggling one pudgy hand for more. Daryl half-rose and scooted over beside Beth, offering her a biscuit from the side of his pack. She stuck it in her mouth as Beth swallowed hard. “-Daryl, I don’t wanna tell ‘em we lost her coz we were stuck out in the open lookin’ for ‘em. I’d never forgive myself. She needs to be safe”

There was that word again. That sacred word that made them both tense up, their eyes on the baby girl waving an arm. Daryl laid the back of his fingers against one of her cheeks. She felt too warm again. He breathed a sharp, violent sound that sounded something between a curse and a prayer, and then nodded shortly.

“A’rri’te. We need som’ing wi’ walls. Doors. Runnin’ water”

“I’d settle for walls. Exits. Somethin’ defensible. We need medicine too. Som’thing to bring her fever down. Don’ know what’s wrong with her. If it were serious, she’d be cryin’ more, wouldn’t she?”

“Dunno-” he shrugged, frowning. He swallowed and she knew what he was thinking, because she was thinking it too; _I wish Hershel was here_. “-Re’kon north is our best bet. Get where it’s cold. Fewer Walkers in the win’er, maybe...they don’ like the cold” he said instead of addressing the heavy weight sitting over both of them.

“We need gas. And stock up on formula. I’ve been rationin’ s’much as I can, but we’re down to maybe two or three bottles now”

He rubbed the back of his neck and let Judith latch onto his finger. She cooed at him and a smile caressed the very edges of his flat, tired mouth, the first Beth had seen since they’d starting running. They sat in the silence that followed, listening to the crickets outside. There were Walkers moaning not far away, so Daryl stood and went to check on them. Beth took a precious little of the formula they’d scavenged and made up a small bottle, hoping to settle Judith enough for her to sleep. She kept one eye on the door, heart beating fast, and hoped the baby wouldn’t cry. The last time she’d started kicking up a proper fuss, Beth had to hold a hand over her tiny little mouth to quiet her. It had boiled in her stomach like acid, the way Judith had whined and struggled against her, made tears sting hot against her lashes.

 _We don’t get to be upset_.

Daryl returned while Beth was gently rocking Judith, sucking down the weak milk desperately. They both watched her, hearts breaking, and their need to find somewhere to settle was written there in the baby’s grabbing fingernails leaving raised marks on the back of Beth’s hand. Daryl set his crossbow by the door and held out his hands for Judith. He’d taken the last watch, so now it was Beth’s turn.

“Aye there, Lil Asskicker. Time to get some sleep, huh? Yeah, sounds good, don’ it sweet’eart”

Beth took his crossbow as he lay on the dusty couch, curving himself around the baby with his back to the door, protecting Judith from any attack with his body. Heart and body heavy, Beth set her shoulder to the wall and kept her stare out the window. Later she slowly circled the house to check their various barricades on the exits. Her watch passed uneventfully, lulled by the soundtrack of Daryl’s soft snores broken twice by Judith’s whines, his jolting awake and soothing her, then settling immediately back to sleep. Used to be, he’d catnap lightly, waking every hour or so to check on her, but now he slept short and hard; whether because he’d learned to trust in Beth, or because sleeplessness had finally taken a toll on him, she wasn’t sure.

When the moon reached it’s highest point, Beth returned from a final check of their perimeter to wake him for his watch. He had Judith tucked inside the protection of his leather vest, one arm protectively encircling her, her tiny hands wrapped up in his shirt and her puffs of breath shifting the hair on his chest. His other hand rested on the knife in his belt, shucked on the floor. His dark hair was falling into his eyes and he looked so damn young it made Beth catch her breath. She bit her lip as he snuffled, tucked his chin over Judith’s head and smacked his lips sleepily before settling again.

She left him to sleep.

He awoke with a start an hour and half later, grunted and craned his neck over his shoulder to look at her. She was perched on the edge of the window sill, one hand on her knife and the other keeping his crossbow from sliding off it’s place on her thigh.

“Hi” she murmured to his bright, glaring face.

“Wha’ the fuck yuh lemme sleep for?” he slurred, carefully sitting up and bringing the sleeping baby with him. She watched as he tucked her against his chest and slipped his vest off with one arm, wrapping her in the stained wings before carefully depositing her back on the couch. She coughed weakly and whined a little, and he shushed her till she fell back to sleep. 

“I didn’t wanna wake you. I’m alright anyway” Beth replied when he’d turned again, fisting the sleep roughly from his eyes. 

“Fuckin’ damn idiot. Git outta here. Git some sleep” he snarled at her, grabbing his crossbow out of her lap. His fingers brushed her leg and that spot burned hot. Squinted blue eyes glared at her until she nodded and shuffled over to the couch. Judith whined, disturbed by Beth’s scanty weight dipping the cushions, but slept again. Beth felt like she was asleep before her head had hit the arm rest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys so I'm still getting used to AO3 and had a fuck up with the chapter order. Sorry about that, don't understand at ALL what the hell happened. Anyway, the chapter order is as follows;  
> 1- Safe  
> 2- Domesticity  
> 3- Safety  
> 4- Entangled


	2. Domesticity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peaches and Taylor Swift as Beth and Daryl hit the road like an All-American family.

Four days later saw a four-door Jeep burning down a two-lane back road to wind around another few hundred miles of back roads and dirt roads and one-horse towns, skirting the interstate, keeping their heads down. Beth had her knees propped against the dash, nose close to a tattered map spread on her lap while Daryl drove, one hand on the wheel, the other holding an overripe peach. In the backseat, Judith was asleep in a baby carrier they’d torn out of another vehicle. It was almost domestic. It felt nearly safe. The back of Beth’s neck prickled. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught him adjust the rear view so he could keep an eye on the sleeping baby, a jerky half-smile that made her heart catch tangling up the side of his face. He hid it by taking a bite of the peach, juice spraying down his cheek and chin. She giggled at him and he shot her a mocking glare.

Her laughter dried up as he dragged his tongue up his wrist, chasing a sweet drop sliding down his skin. Sucking loudly at the fruit to clean up leaking juice, his teeth sunk into the soft flesh. Beth swallowed in time with the bob of his Adam’s Apple and shivered, looking quickly back to the map. Some small sound must have given her away, because he looked curiously sideways at her. Feeling a blush sneaking up on her, she cleared her throat and folded the map, studying the one square they were still travelling across.

“Does it feel like we’re goin’ the wrong way to you?” she asked.

“Naw. Why?”

He watched as she pursed her lips and squinted at the road marked with her fingertip, raising her eyes then to look out the windshield. Releasing a slow half-sigh from her nose and pushed the map onto the dash.

“I dun’know. ‘s nothin’” she muttered, in no way dismissive. 

Daryl sucked peach skin from his teeth thoughtfully.

“We gotta keep Lil Asskicker safe, yanno. For Rick. They’ll be alright”

“They prolly think she’s dead. Hell, they prolly think we’re dead” Beth admitted down-heartedly. Daryl grunted.

“Take more’n’a damn tank to kill a Dixon, they know that. C’mon, fin’ some music or sum’in” he tapped the back of his knuckles against the middle console pointedly.

She lolled her head towards it, gathering herself up slowly. There were a few of CDs loose inside, two of them with hand-written titles and a third that made Beth smirk. When Daryl frowned at her questioningly she showed him the case and he gave a snort of amusement.

“Aw, Jesus. That the best we got?”

“Don’t cuss. And I dun’know wha’s on these, so cross your fingers” Beth gestured the others, putting the Taylor Swift single back.

The song that played then was loose and chilled, a sweet female singer pleading for some faceless faction to return her lover raised on the Devil’s backbone to her. Beth snuck a sideways look at Daryl, who was focused on the road. He tossed his peach stone out the window and then left it rolled down, the breeze smelling like the pines, with just a touch of a chill to it. It was as refreshing as a cold shower. Beth looked quickly away when Daryl caught her looking at him, and thought maybe his gaze stayed on her for a little longer.

They listened in silence as they drove along, dodging Walkers in a few spots and being thankful for the extra height on the Jeep as Daryl swung it onto the shoulder at a few points to navigate abandoned vehicles and crashes. Judith got peach pieces for lunch and Beth played with her on her lap in the front seat until she fell asleep again, then transferred her back to her carrier.

As the afternoon began to wane, they came up on a knot of vehicles and Daryl slowed to a stop about fifty metres down the road, squinting curiously up ahead. Before Beth could question him, he drove forward slowly, and as she followed his narrow-eyed gaze she saw what he’d noticed; no Walkers. Despite the crumpled hoods and crushed sides on all three vehicles, the dead weren’t aimlessly hovering around. He stopped and let the engine idle, popping the door and cautiously swinging out with his crossbow at the ready. He left one foot inside the car and whistled piercingly, watching for a reaction from anywhere. Beth checked behind them. Judith was stirring in her car seat, little arms and legs stretching and kicking.

“Check it out?” Daryl questioned gruffly.

Trying to hide her surprise that he was even asking her opinion at all, she shrugged. “Could use the gas” was her comment on the situation.

He nodded and shut the door, heading for the wreck. Beth reached into the back seat to grab a fire axe they’d taken back in the last town, and soothed a half-awake Judith, popping in a clean pacifier.

“We’ll be back in a little bit, baby girl, m’kay? You just wait right there” Clambering out, Beth shut her door and eyed their surroundings.

At Daryl’s low call, she went to the back and pulled out a half-empty jerry can and length of garden hose before heading over to him. He popped the fuel hatch of the nearest car and unscrewed it, sniffing briefly. At his nod, Beth handed him the hose and can before walking past him to check out the inside of the other two vehicles, peering in the windows.

The damned Walker had been hidden by the angle of two impacted vehicles and the stack of supplies on the roof of a van. It’s throaty, crackling roar as it rushed her had Daryl running in a second. She bought the axe up between herself and the monster, her back slamming hard into the side of the car he was siphoning.

“ **Beth**!” his hoarse cry went unnoticed.

She was totally, unnaturally silent as she shoved the head of the axe up violently, breaking the thing’s jaw and spraying her face with rotten gore. She made a small sound then, one of horror that slipped past tightly pressed lips. The wet thunk of a bolt driving into her adversary’s temple and reducing it to decomposing flesh was the sigh of an angelic choir to Beth’s ears. With a gasp she stumbled away and Daryl grabbed her with one arm, holding his crossbow aloft with the other.

“Shit, shit, oh shit. I’m sorry. I’m really sorry, Daryl, I didn’t-”

“You bit? Fucker, _Christ_ , you alright? You bit?” he spoke over the top over her, shaking her arm a bit, calloused fingers nipping her soft skin through the thin grey cardigan.

“I’m fine. Sorry. I’m alright” she spat out, shaking him off. She readjusted her grip on the axe, body shaking violently under her skin as bile burned her throat. She bit her lip to try and steady the panic screaming in her bones and immediately felt utter, raw disgust taint her mouth. Spitting the Walker blood that had sprayed her face to the side, she swore again and swallowed against rising nausea.

“Though yuh tol’ me not tuh cuss” came Daryl’s gruff voice and a rag being thrust towards her, shaking her from her traumatised stillness. Words choked up in her throat as she took the rag, shaking her head instead of replying. Wiping her face, the smell of it hit her and she felt a violent shudder turn her stance to liquid.

Never had she wanted her father more in her life; she wanted his firm, gentle hugs and she wanted to hear her sister’s laugh and she wanted to have a shower so hot it scalded her skin, boil herself alive, peel her skin off her bones so she could feel clean again. A sob rattled her chest and Daryl flinched, eyes widening helplessly, fingers twitched in an aborted movement. He didn’t know what to do with a crying girl-child and they didn’t have the time for Beth to be a child, she realised firmly.

Daryl watched as, abruptly, the frightened little girl he recognised from the Greene’s farm was banished from Beth’s face. Her features become stone, stern and unrelenting and she took a long, deep, steady breath, far too steady for someone who’d been on the edge of panic a heartbeat ago. Her blue eyes turned cold and she spat one more time, finished wiping her face and then looked at him. He tensed the corners of his eyes at her questioningly and she nodded, handing him back his rag and lifting the axe.

“There’s sleepin’ gear on the van there” she said, walking away.

He let her go, wondering if he should say something more. Her back was stiff, dregs of her blonde hair knocking against the back of her neck. She’d found hair ties in the bathroom of the place they’d squatted in a week ago, and called them a godsent. Daryl didn’t think so. With her hair pulled back and high off her face, the naked angle of her swan-like neck was obvious and the shadows made by the dips of her collarbones and the cut of her cheekbones and long line of her jaw stole his attention. He knew Beth Greene was no little girl. He’d known that, at some level, since the winter they’d spent on the road, and she’d killed Walkers and scavenged and fought on the run like the rest of them. Much the same as Carl had stopped being a boy, she’d become a woman now and he knew that. Except that he’d always figured that Beth was a woman in the same way as Lori had been, or Carol, or his local preacher’s wife Before. He’d never had cause to examine his feelings on Beth and her apparent womanhood since then. Now though, trusting her to watch over them while he slept, and watching sunlight play on the too-sharp angles of her face...

He angrily shook his forbidden thoughts away and rounded on the car again to finish siphoning the gas. They moved fast, efficiently, the way Rick had taught them, and in ten minutes they were giving the crash a final once-over. Beth had just caught a small first aid kit Daryl tossed her over the roof of the further car, turning back to get to the Jeep. Judith had started crying a few minutes ago, a definite sign that it was time to go. Time stilled around Beth at that moment, because she registered that Judith was still crying in the same heart-wrenching, blood-chilling moment that she spotted three Walkers only a few feet from Judith’s side of their Jeep. She let loose a scream that could have been her partner’s name, dropped the first aid kit, and broke into a sprint. The Walkers, distracted as she’d hoped they would be, all turned towards her. Armed with only her hunting knife, she ran at them, could hear Daryl shouting behind her, saw the Walker closest to her fall with a bolt through it’s eye, and then was on the next, shoving it away from her so she could slide past and put herself between the oncoming onslaught and Judith’s door. Her knife crunched through cranial bone and squelched in the Walker’s brainpan as the other one grabbed at her side, sending her flying sideways.

Daryl, running at a flat sprint to her aid, had already fired off a second bolt at the only other Walker he had a clean shot at, too far away, too damn slow. When he swung his long blade out of it’s sheath, with no time to reload his bow, his boots suddenly splayed from under him, sliding on something that crunched and gave way beneath his heels. Pain, hot, immediate, terrible, exploded up the side of his thigh and dug rabid claws into his ribs and arm. A hoarse scream tore up his throat. He rolled onto his side, feeling the glass from a broken window that had sliced his side snap and crackle against the tar, and pushed himself to his knee to prime his bolt. He looked up wildly, blood on his fingers making the bow-string slip, and shouted for Beth. He could see a flash of her blonde hair behind the shadow of the Walker and terror lit up his chest. Suddenly, she was standing separate from the Walker and he loosed the bolt even as she gathered herself to pounce on it, knife held up at the ready. It took her a few blinks to register that the threat was now gone from in front of her. What she couldn’t see that Daryl could was the five or six now shambling out of the woods, attracted by the noise and, he realised dumbly, the smell of his blood.

“No! NO! _Daryl_!!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (The playlist on the CDs that Beth finds can be found here; http://8tracks.com/amela_k/seeing-fire)


	3. Safety

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With no other choice, and Daryl's life on the line, Beth takes a gamble, betting all of their lives.

Four days had crept by in feverish fits and starts. Daryl’s wounds; a deep, ragged slice in his thigh, cuts littered above his hip across his ribs on his left side, a long, jagged cut up his arm and a puncture in his calf, all from broken glass on the road, were festering. Beth had done her best, first to close the worst of them, the one on his thigh and the puncture in the meat of his calf, but she had nothing to stitch the wounds with, few antibiotics and only a few sterilised bandages. She’d done what she could from the side of the road as Daryl grunted weakly and sat bleeding all over the passenger’s seat. He’d told her to keep going, but when night fell the next day, he was grey and grinding his teeth and weak. She’d driven straight to a town they’d been going to avoid, somehow managed to dodge Walkers, juggle barely conscious Daryl and baby Judith, and barricaded them inside a hotel room with a fire escape and a door into a second room. She’d had to venture out twice, bringing another vehicle to the bottom of the fire escape in case the place was overrun, and a second, desperate attempt to find medication for Daryl. The first time, he’d been awake enough to lock the door behind her while she ignored his protests, and then prop himself up by the window to watch Judith. The second time, he was in and out of consciousness and she’d been forced to shut Judith in a closet, holding back tears and smothering her confused little face with kisses. She left a baby’s bottle of water and biscuits in there with toys, and swallowed panic.

That had been yesterday. She’d returned to Judith’s screams and six Walkers pushing on the door of their room trying to get inside, cutting herself a swathe through a few curiously heading for the hotel lobby. Daryl was unconscious on the floor between the bed where she’d left him and the door, blood splattered everywhere, his crossbow still in his hand.

 _“Yuh left us”_ he’d slurred brokenly when he rode a brief wave of alertness before falling back into fevered dreams. Judith hiccoughed for an hour while Beth finally sobbed herself hoarse, bent over the baby and covered with Walker guts from clearing the hall outside.

“I had to, Daryl, I’m sorry, so sorry, please, I’m sorry” she’d cried brokenly.

She’d risked it all for some over the counter pain meds and a single tube of antiseptic, and it wasn’t enough. Daryl had a fever absolutely ravaging his rangy form. There was little Beth could do but keep watch and bath his brow with the muddy, lukewarm water from the hotel taps. She kept his wounds as clean as she could, still rancid, puffy infection stealing over them. She hadn’t slept outside brief snatches on her feet, out on the fire escape or propped against the wall, since Daryl had gotten sick. They were low on food, and the room stank of vomit and stale sweat, and Daryl wasn’t getting any better. Beth was out of ideas.

Their fifth day was dawning on them with her leaning on the window sill as Judith played on the floor with plastic utensils from the kitchenette drawers. Daryl muttered his way through horrific fever-dreams that Beth had long since learned to tune out of. There had been monsters in Daryl’s past long before the dead started walking. She’d had to hold him down the best she could last night while he shouted for Merle and for somebody to STOP HURTING HIM! He'd bled through the last clean bandages. She was crying again when he’d finally passed out and gone still, and so was Judith. She’d almost blacked out herself from sheer exhaustion and ended up eating a packet of instant coffee to try and wake up. It was awful and now she had a headache.

At first, when she saw the car pull up across the road and people pile out, she thought she was seeing things. That sleep-deprivation had turned on her and she was going to get Judith and Daryl both killed by thinking some Walker was Rick and Maggie and Glenn, come to rescue them. Straightening shakily, she blinked hard and stared harder. Pinched the vulnerable inside of her arm to convince herself she hadn’t nodded off at her post again. Finally, when she’d established that there were, in fact, actual human beings on the street below her, she froze with indecision. She looked at Judith, cooing at a potato masher, and then Daryl, sweaty, pale features open in his sickness, weak and vulnerable the both of them. Looked between them again, then out the window.

“..hmmhmmgh, hmm...gettin’ ‘em...prison...Rick..hmph...Lil Asski’er...” Daryl stuttered out under his breath, shifting weakly.

“Aghgaa!” Judith declared happily, banging her masher on a pillow Beth had propped her up on. She was sitting up, but not quite steady in it yet.

Beth turned back to the window as three of the five figures went inside the deli Beth had already checked yesterday on her way back. She reacted quickly then, scooping Judith up and putting her in her cupboard hideaway again; this time, Judith wouldn’t cry. She’d been sleeping in there the last couple of nights. Then grabbing her pistol with it’s four remaining bullets and Daryl’s long knife, she tried quickly but in vain to rouse him. Cursing in a way that would have made her father faint, she wrote a note on the hotel stationary and hoped that if he woke he’d be lucid enough to read it:

 **Gone for help. Jude in closet.** She hesitated before tacking on the end: **Stay safe.**

Then, moving quickly before she could think it through and talk herself out of it, she let herself out onto the fire escape and hurried down the steps. It dropped her into an alley down the side of the hotel; their room was on a corner, so she exited to the street she had watched from the window and steeled herself. There were two men waiting outside the deli. One wore a once calico-coloured Stetson that reminded her a little of Carl, and the other cradled a shotgun.

“Hey” she called out, stepping cautiously out onto the street.

Both men jumped badly, both swinging weapons in her direction, surprise colouring their faces. She let the weight of the pistol in her back pocket reassure her, and showed her hands. Daryl’s knife hung by her side. She’d already decided that if she got any bad vibes from either of them, she’d run the opposite direction to the hotel and then circle back once she’d lost them.

“Now wha’ in the hell is this?! What are yeh doin’ here, girl?” cried the man in the Stetson, exchanging a look with his friend.

Beth took a careful step off the curve towards them. The man with the shotgun was looking around, looking for a trap. Somehow, that reassured her.

“I need help, please. Bandages. Antibiotics, if you have them” she told them. Her head was spinning from the run down the fire escape and she was panting. Four days with next to no sleep and she was weak as a kitten. Suddenly her plan to run if she didn’t like the feeling they gave her seemed irreconcilably stupid.

“Put that thing away, Sean, Chris’sake, she’s just a youngin’. You alright then? You alone?” asked Stetson, walking towards her.

She stepped back, hand going to her gun and he froze. “ _Don’t_!” she warned him, holding out a hand.

Slowly, Stetson let the crude, homemade cudgel in his hand slide to the ground, and then straightened again, showing her his own hands. Her eyes flicked over to Sean, who’d bought his shotgun up again when she’d reached for her own gun.

“Now we ain’t gunna hurt ya, miss, I can promise you that” assured the Stetson gently.

“I’ve heard that before” she bluffed, but she showed her hands once more.

“I’m sure ya have. Now, they call me Ranger. Are you hurt? Is that why you need medicine?” Ranger had a smooth baritone voice, not unlike Hershel’s. The thought made Beth want to curl into a ball. Behind them, a young man and a bearded man emerged from the deli, more guns between them. Beth blanched. Ranger rounded on them when he saw her spooked expression.

“Drop them weapons, Maurice, Billy! We got ourselves a breather” he ordered. Maurice, the younger man, came to stand beside Sean, holding a single shot rifle and staring at her wide-eyed. Billy had an axe and he stayed back, calling inside to the last man. He came out, thin and lanky and wearing a black cowboy hat, holding another shotgun. 

Beth felt sick. She didn’t like these odds anymore and she wished she’d never left her barricaded hotel room...except Daryl might die, and that scared her more than these men ever could. Ranger looked at her encouragingly and she thought of Daryl like a prayer, thought of his secret smile for Judith hiding behind a splurt of peach juice.

“Daryl? Who’s that? Is that who’s sick? Good Lord, honey, you really don’t look so good” Ranger was saying uncomfortably.

She hadn’t realised she’d spoken and shook herself.

“She’s bit! She’s infected!” cried Maurice, fingers having a spasm on his rifle.

“Don’t be a damn fool, no I ain’t. Christ” Beth snapped at him, puffing up like a pigeon, and then flicked her eyes back to Ranger’s concerned brown gaze. “My...he’s...my husband-” she said it before she could stop herself and then ploughed on. “-He’s hurt. Fell on some glass, and I ain’t had nothin’ to stitch him up with. I jus’...could...I need...” she trailed off, words and sentences sliding away from her like debris in floodwater. She gripped the handle of Daryl’s knife to try and ground herself. When Ranger tried to come closer again, she almost tripped on the curb in her haste to back up and barely managed to right herself.

“Whoa, whoa, sweet Jesus, child, steady! Daryl, is that your husband? He’s hurt, huh?”

She blinked heavily and nodded, feeling guilty at the lie. Ranger nodded understandingly. Behind him, the others were stock-still, waiting. “And you? What’s your name?”

Beth frowned at him, thinking vaguely that this infomation wouldn’t help Daryl...but she answered anyway. “Beth. Beth Greene”

She almost fainted when she realised, to her dismay, that she’d given them her real name. She must have been more exhausted than she’d given herself credit for.

“You take us to your husband, to Daryl, and we’ll help you out, okay? Alright? We got ourselves a set up few miles away, with fences. It’s safe there. We can treat your man” coaxed Ranger.

Beth felt nauseous and close to tears and dizzy even as her immediate negative head-shaking made the light-headedness worse. “No, no, just’ we just need medicine. I just need...I can...I’ll look after him, I can look after him, Daddy, but I need some medicine...some...” She didn’t realise she’d sagged onto the ground until gentle, strong hands were helping her stand again. She cried out and tried to shove him away, only to be hushed like she rocked Judith to sleep.

“By Christ, Ranger, kid’s skin an’ farkin' bone! Seen farkin' deaders in better state’n’er!” said a male voice with a strange accent. Beth struggled and stood. Sean had the accent, holding her elbow and eyeing her.

“I can...we’ll be alright, but Daryl-” she tried, but Ranger interrupted her firmly.

“Beth, I know this ain’t the sort of world where a body can take a thing on the word of a stranger, but believe me when I say you will come to no harm from us. I cannot, in good conscience, leave you and your man here, if he’s not well and you’re in this condition” he told her firmly, no nonsense. She stared at him, and then at the other men.

“I...I, I...-” she pushed a trembling hand through her tangled hair, drawing it away from her face, and finally nodded decidedly. “-Okay, but I’ll only take you”

Cries of protest abounded. Ranger waved them off.

“Gedoutta here with that, all of ya! Look at the condition she’s in! If y’all were in her shoes, you wouldn’t be purposefully stackin’ no odds in some load of strangers favour now would ya?” He looked satisfied at reluctant noises of agreement before turning expectantly back to her.

Beth chewed her lip. “You can bring a weapon, if that’ll make you men feel better” she offered and almost immediately cursed her own trusting nature.

Ranger nodded and took his cudgel back from Sean. “Thank ye kindly, m’am” he said, and gave away a slight Texas twang that she hadn’t noticed before.

With a shrug, she turned on her heel and led the way.

“How far’s your man?” Ranger asked as they ducked into the alley.

Beth jumped up to pull the ladder down towards them and jerked her chin upwards.

"Third floor. I saw you from our window”

“Ye took a helluva risk” he commented, as they reached the third story.

She paused before opening the window, staring at him. “I am telling you so you know, you hurt us, I will take out as many of you as I can and I will go down screaming for every monster in this place to tear you apart” she said, voice stronger than it had been in days.

Ranger stared at her for a moment. “You ever killed a man, Beth Greene?”

Beth blinked at him, remembering Rick’s three questions with a pang. She shook her head and lifted the window open. She could hear Judith whining inside, pushing on the wardrobe door. “Never too late to learn” she decided and ducked inside. She kept one eye on Ranger and one hand on her pistol as he followed her in, larger and clumsier than she had been. By the time he’d found her feet, she was gathering the baby up and finding her pacifier, shushing her and struggling to hold her with only one arm so she could leave her other hand hovering pointedly beside the knife at her hip.

“Oh my Lord...dear God, you’ve got a little one too?”

Beth could only nod. Ranger’s face hardened determinedly.


	4. Entangled

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daryl returns to consciousness in a strange place, is informed he is now Mister Daryl Greene, and compares Beth to his brother's pig dog.

Waking up in pain was hardly a shocking occurrence for a man who’d led the life Daryl Dixon had, even before the world turned to shit. Waking up in pain, surrounded by warmth and softness and the groggy ache of painkillers, however, that was still new to him. He’d thought he was dreaming that time he’d woken up in the Greene’s homestead after Andrea tried shooting him. There was a soft, warm body close by and a baby making those soothing nonsense sounds he’d grown to secretly adore. Opening his eyes, he found himself in a plain room, with brick walls painted white and a wooden cross nailed there. He was laying on a bed that smelt clean, and not clean like dusty and disused, but like fresh laundry. Immediately, he pushed himself into a sitting position, casting for a weapon, heart hammering. It was the soothing hands, one curled on the back of his neck, and the other pressed to his chest, that bought him out of his pain-soaked tailspin. Then Beth’s voice, soothing.He slumped, bit down hard on a groan of pain. His mouth was dry. He lay still for a moment, gathering himself, and opened his eyes more slowly. The first thing he saw was Beth’s lovely, concerned face. He croaked her name as a question and she nodded, relief lighting up her features.

“You scared the damn hell out of me” she scolded him, voice cracking, helping him sit up carefully, and then offered him a drink of water. He sipped carefully, aware his stomach was clenching on empty. His left side was stiff.

“Judith?” he demanded as soon as he trusted himself to look at her.

Beth kept one hand settled on his shoulder and nodded across the room. The baby was sitting in a play pen with a doll and a plastic dog toy with a squeaker, giggling happily. He breathed a long sigh of relief.

“Wha’d’I miss happenin’? Feel like I got hit by a damn train. Where in tha hell are we?” he asked then.

Beth tensed.

“Daryl...”

The door opened before she could finish and a large man with broad shoulders and a Stetson held in his hand tilted his upper body inside. He smiled when he saw Daryl sitting up, even though the redneck’s face was a suspicious black glower.

“Ah, Mister Greene, is surely is a pleasure to see you awake. You had your girls a mite concerned there for a touch. I’m Ranger. How are you feelin’?”

That seemed like too much for Daryl to take in at one time, so he settled for baring his teeth instead of trying to reply.

“Beth, wha’s goin’ on?” he growled as he tried to swing his legs out of the bed, put himself between the stranger and Beth, and swore when he felt the familiar yank of fresh stitches on his leg. She grabbed his hand.

“Please, just wait and listen. Ranger, could you give us a minute?” Beth asked the man sweetly. He was frowning at Daryl, who glared right back.

“Sure. I’ll just be outside” He left and Daryl shot her a venomous glare.

“Don’t-” she told him, stopping him short, and he realised suddenly how weary she looked. She sat heavily in an armchair pulled close to the bed. “-They helped me. They saved your life, and Judith’s too. So just don’t lecture me about anything right now, okay? I’m too tired”

For a while, he let her have her quiet. He had vague, fever-coloured flashes of stairs and Judith crying, and Walkers trying to smash down a door, and Beth’s worried face and her touch gentle on his face, and her bloodied hands holding him down. He’d hallucinated Merle again, and dreamed of his old man at his worst. He winced and focused on Judith so he wouldn’t have to look at her, look at her and see her trust in him broken, knowing she pitied him for all she’d heard. When his patience had grown thin, he nodded at the door. “He called me Mister Greene. Wha’d, yuh tell ‘im, I’s yuh brother or sum’ing?”

She winced and looked at the door before pushing him to lay back down. With her small hand burning a brand against his chest, clothed in a shirt he didn’t recognise, he hoped she wouldn’t be able to feel how fast his heart was beating as she leaned close.

“I told them you’re my husband and Judith’s our baby”

“You done WHAT?!”

She hissed at him to be quiet, shooting a look at the door and shooting him a vicious look.

“Wha’ in the damned fucking hell yuh do tha’ for, huh? Fucking hell, Beth, Christ! What was yuh-”

“I was _thinking_ , Daryl Dixon, that you were gunna die and I had a five month old and I wasn’t...I couldn’t...-” she shoved at tears that had dared to slip down her cheeks and hissed at him. “-I wasn’t about to let you die! Not you. Not...I couldn’t do it” He stared at her, his pulse skipping several beats as he registered her words. She ducked his gaze, picking up Judith who had stopped playing at their angry voices and began to cry. With a grunt, he sat up again, throwing back the sheet to have a look at his leg. He flinched when he realised that not only was he wearing a clean shirt, his jeans were gone, leaving him in only a pair of cotton boxers.

“ 'tha hell are ma clothes?!”

“If they don’t fall to bits without the blood an’ dirt holding ‘em together, they’re drying. I had to clean you up, else clean bandages wouldn’t have done anything for your hurts”

He mulled that over for a second and then jolted with realisation. “Wha-! Fuckin-”

“Don’t cuss!”

He ignored that, pointing a finger accusatorily at her. “What in tha hell you think yore doin’ seein’ me wi’out clothes on?! Jesus fuckin’ Christ!” he remembered her ruse just in time and dropped his voice. If these people thought he'd had a  _kid_ with her, they'd be wondering why he got so worked up about her seeing him naked. The very thought made his inside buck and twist, aroused, sickened, hatefully excited. 

“Quit acting like I never seen a naked man, Daryl, good Lord!”

Daryl paused at that, staring at her as she offered Judith the squeaky toy again. “S’not like I had time to be checking you out, what with you bleedin’ pus all over the place”

It took her a moment to realise what she said, and then it was her turn to jolt. She twisted and stared at him, a blush turning her cheeks and neck solid crimson. Her mouth spluttered on something between a defence and an apology. If he hadn’t been so damn mad and in pain, it would have been funny.“Not that I’d’a been checkin’ you out anyways! I mean, not that you’re not-oh God, I just mean to say, that you were hurt, and I didn’t look or anything, I didn’t-”

“Shuddup. Goddamn. Thought we’d gotten you over that chit-chattin’ shit” he turned his eyes down to his side before he thought too much on Beth Greene seeing him indecent. Then he spent a moment with his eyes closed angrily to curse himself for thinking Beth and indecent in the same sentence when his head still wasn’t working right. He thumbed the line of stitches on the side of his thigh to distract himself. The hole in his calf was aggressively red and both were hot as hell, sickly yellow flecks still poisoning the wounds. Beth came to sit down as he looked at the cut on his arm. It wasn't deep but it stung. 

“How close was it?” he asked. She gave him a steady look that told him everything he needed to know.

“What do ya remember?” She handed Judith over to him when he gestured for her. The baby smelt clean and giggled when his stubble tickled her. His arm hurt and he shifted her carefully away from his sore ribs before she could kick at the excitedly.

“Walkers, at the car wreck. Felt bad. Real bad. Wanted to keep going. You...-”

 _You saved my life_ was what he was thinking. “-shoulda fuckin’ left me there when I got bad, you dumb bitch” was what he said.

He wasn’t surprised when she snatched Judith out of his hands, causing the baby to cry.

“Bitch huh?” she snapped at him, periwinkle eyes blazing.

“And if you wanted me to leave you there, you should have thought of that before you-!" she stopped herself short, huffing, and he wondered what she'd been about to say. "-Never mind. I don’t care what you do. These people are alright, and as soon as you can move without falling over, we’ll go”

“And if they don’t let us?” he returned fire.

She glanced at the door and then got right up into his face. He could smell toothpaste, actual, minty toothpaste, on her breath as her angry hiss drove daggers into him.

“You think after Woodbury, after all of that, after what he did to _my siste_ r that I didn’t think of that?! I had no choice, Daryl, because you were gunna _die_ , and I don’t wanna lose you and you can take that however you damn well please, because I don’t care. If they don’t let us leave, it don’t matter, coz I got my weapons, and I got a car stashed a few miles away. I’m not some silly little girl! Not anymore. I’m going to get you something to eat. Try not to sick it back up again” she finished her rant coldly and stalked out of the room. A deep voice asked after her and she bit out something so scathing Daryl flinched. Ranger cautiously stuck his head in the room.

“Well, I am a’thinkin’ that coulda gone better?” he inquired lightly.

Daryl shot a quick glare at Ranger. He tested a little weight on his sore leg and stayed sat on the bed. Ranger walked around the bed so he wasn’t facing Daryl’s back, which the hunter appreciated.

“Your wife saved your life yesterday-”

“ _Yesterday_?! How damn long I been out?”

Ranger eyed him. “From what Beth’s told us you’ve been in and out of consciousness for four days at least. We bought you here in the early hours of the morning yesterday and loaded you up with every lick of infection-killin’ thing we had. It’s about five in the afternoon now”

Daryl clenched a fist and pressed it to his mouth. Beth had been alone, with Judith to watch, for almost for a week. With a queasy stomach, he wished the other man would leave so he could fall in on himself for a little bit. It was his job. He was supposed to protect Beth, not the other way around, and certainly not some stranger. Beth looked after Judith and blushed when he caught her being obvious about her damned crush on him, and she did not get that awful, cold look in her pretty blue peepers after killing things. That was on him.

“I should thank you. Fer lookin’ after Beth an’...and our baby. So...” he flapped a hand at the Texan. Ranger nodded.

“Yer welcome, truly. Beth’s a sweet kid”

There it was, the edge that Daryl had been waiting for ever since Beth announced she’d masqueraded herself as his damn wife. The dirty-old-man-that’s-disgusting-what-a-slut line of thought. He stiffened and had to lift his chin a fair way up to meet the other man’s gaze, what with Daryl sitting down with watery legs.

“She ain’t no kid, John Wayne. She ain’t been a kid in a long time” he said and he tried to say it with conviction, like he didn’t think the same things as were dark in Ranger’s eyes when he caught himself looking at Beth for a beat too long.

“How old was she when the two of you got married?” he asked, faux-casual. Daryl bristled.

“I don’ see how that’s any of your business, Mister Ranger. I truly don’t” Beth’s voice interrupted them, an edge to her like steel as she stepped inside, balancing a plate and Judith hitched on her hip. Her eyes were narrowed at Ranger. Daryl had seen a pig dog Merle’ll had once eyeing an intruder like that once. It made him smirk, because in this situation Ranger was the intruder.


	5. Greene

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ranger questions Daryl and Beth about their past, and tells them about a sanctuary they've heard about. Daryl is skeptical of such a place. Beth has other ideas.

“Everything alright in there, Beth?” Ranger inquired with a frown when Beth stormed out of the side room that Daryl had been put in.

“Sure! If you like ungrateful, stupid rednecks, he’s just what you need” she bit out hotly and didn’t slow down.

Judith was crying, and Beth had left her pacifier back in the room, but there was no way she was turning back around.

 _Damn_ him! Damn him and his, his, his everything! Daryl was supposed to be the one who didn’t treat her like a child. He was supposed to be on her side. After everything they’d been through, she would have thought at least that he’d trust her judgement. She’d been trying to keep him alive, and the way he’d spat out that she should have just left him made her blood run cold. He didn’t get it and it frustrated her to no end. They were a team. They were Judith’s protectors. She wouldn’t leave him. Her anger was stirred up more than tiredness than anything, as she stalked down the hall into the farmhouse style kitchen. She'd been cautious as a street mutt without Daryl's blunt force at her side, in this apparent safe place full of people she didn't know. Her heart constantly beat too fast and her palms were sweaty whenever she had to interact with any of Ranger's people, of which there were only seven; Ranger and his niece Jessie, Maurice, Sean, Billy, Billy's grandchildren Liza and Tommy, who were seventeen and fifteen respectively. 

The place they'd bought Beth yesterday used to be a minimum security rehabilitation centre. There were strong brick walls encircling a few self-contained cabins, a large mess hall, a couple of sheds stocked with outdoor gear, and the administration buildings where the staff had lived, which was were Beth had been staying, sleeping in the armchair in the medical bay. She was so distracted, she almost walked right into Jessie, Ranger’s niece.

“Whoa there! Everythin’ alright?” exclaimed the brunette in a John Deere cap.

“Yeah. Fine. Thank you. I was just wondering if I could-oh” Beth suddenly noticed the tin camping plate of stew and a couple of pieces of flat bread that Jessie was holding. The twenty-something year old gave her an easy smile. 

“Made it up when Uncle Range told me your man was awake. How’s he doing?” she asked, offering it to her.

Beth struggled to juggle squirming Judith onto her hip as she replied; “He’s stubborn ass, so I guess that means he’s alrig-come on, honey, quit!” she broke off midsentence to address the cranky child. Judith whined and kicked out, sliding down Beth’s ribs.

“You want, I could take her for a bit, let you get some rest” Jessie offered.

The very thought of leaving Judith in a stranger's care made Beth feel sick and she shook her head, finally getting Judith to settle and forced a smile for Jessie as she took the offered plate of food. Jessie looked dissapointed. Beth ignored the small kick in the back of her feelings and returned quickly, in time to hear Daryl heatedly informing Ranger that Beth wasn’t a child. A cold shot of guilt and realisation cut through her. In the sleep-deprived madness of the rescue, she hadn’t thought about what outsiders might think of a relationship between an eighteen year old and a man who looked about his mid-thirties. When Ranger asked then, with a bite in the shadow of his voice, how old Beth was when they’d gotten married, she pushed open the door with her foot, her anger briefly abated by guilt rising once more. Daryl was a man of his own code, and that code...she flinched: that code would probably crumble in the face of feeling attracted to a girl who was barely legal, yet alone marrying her.

Still, she steadied herself even in the face of that realisation. She was not a little girl. She’d told him that. Now, she just had to prove it to him.

“I don’ see how that’s any of your business, Mister Ranger. I truly don’t” she said, her eyes piercing. 

Ranger could only nod respectfully in the face of her indignant expression as she swept coolly past him, sat Judith on the armchair and then prodded Daryl until he swung his legs back onto the bed.

“Goddammit, let me alone, dammit!” he shook her off, forgetting their ruse in his irritation.

“Stop. Cussing. Around. The baby!” she punctured each word with a jab.

“She ain’t even carin’!” Beth opened her mouth with a return volley with Ranger cleared his throat.

“Sorry, to interrupt, but we just had a few questions to ask you both, now that you’re awake” he said.

Beth kept her head down but she felt Daryl shoot a look at her, intense and questioning. She flicked her eyes at him from under her lashes, letting him know it was his move, his turn to talk. Let him handle their cover story, if he disaproved so intensely of how she'd done it. He took the food off her and jerked his chin at Judith, letting Beth know to get her out of the way. Then he took a mouthful of food, glared at Beth when she cautioned him to take it slow, and then nodded at Ranger.

“Alright. When we found you, where were y’all headin’?”

“North” Daryl grunted, swallowing. His mouth was watering for the food, but he knew enough even without Beth’s eyes on him to take it slow.

“Why?”

“Figured the cold slows ‘em down. Needed to keep Lil Assk-the baby safe”

Ranger looked unconvinced. Beth was kneeling on the floor to change Judith’s diaper. Daryl, propped on his elbow on the bed, eating his stew, tore a piece of bread and handed it to Judith to distract her as Beth finished wrapping her in a cloth diaper. “

What about Terminus? If you were gunna risk it all, why not risk it for that?”

Beth and Daryl looked at one another, confused.

“What?” Daryl grunted around his next mouthful of food.

“What’s Terminus?” Beth translated.

“A sanctuary. Down the railway tracks a ways. Everyone we’ve had passing through here in the last three months is heading that way. We woulda headed there ourselves, but we don’t have that sorta equipment, and this place is holding out well enough” he gestured to the brick walls.

“How’d’ya know ‘bout it?” asked Daryl, suspiciously.

“Signs up and down the railway. At every crossing. Same thing; a sign and a map. People have written stuff besides the map, tellin’ their kin to meet ‘em there. Ain’t seen nothin’ to say it’s a bust”

“That don’ meant it ain’t. Jus’ means nobody livin’ to talk about it” Daryl pointed out, one of his blunt insights that oftentimes betrayed his sharp intelligence. Ranger folded his arms and looked thoughtful.

“That may be so. Where about’s were you two camped, before now, anyway?”

Beth looked to Daryl, but he didn’t look at her. He kept his eyes on Ranger, squinting up at him as he unravelled the man’s body language carefully. Ranger looked back, sighed, and unfolded his arms.

“Well, you didn’t have that little girl on the road. She’s too healthy to have had a malnourished mother, and isn’t malnourished herself. Hungry, like you two have been running for couple of weeks, and that’s maximum. How’s’about I don’t treat y’all like idiots, and ya don’t lie to me? How’s that fer a deal? I’m jus’ tryna keep my people safe here, Mister Greene, same’s’you” he explained patiently.

It was testament to how hungry Daryl was that he was more focused on slowly chewing a piece of bread than the way Ranger had addressed him. He seemed to come to a decision and nodded to himself, straightening. The movement put pressure on his leg and he winced.

“Had a group. Runnin’ all win’er. Ended up, holed up in a prison. Had Judith there, got some new people. Really made a go of it. Guy from Woodbury, called hisself the Gov’nor, he came in wiv a damn tank. Blew us t’bits. Dunno if anyone made it out, or nobody. We tried, for a while, find ours...but the kid got sick” he finished shortly, punching a pillow behind him into shape so he could sit up, fold his arms and glare at Ranger.

Beth felt her hands begin to shake as she left Judith to play in her playpen. In a terrible rush, something in Daryl’s words bought reality smashing into her, acidic pain boiling up her throat and roiling in her stomach as her father’s final moments flashed before her eyes. They’d been running so hard immediately afterwards, trying to keep Judith safe, trying to stay alive, she hadn’t cried. Not for Maggie or Glenn or Rick or Carl or any of the others. Not for the children. Wearily, she wondered if Lizzie and Mika had made it onto the bus, but she could think of no reason for them to have left Judith in her carrier. The thought of Judith, screaming alone in the open, made jagged things catch in Beth’s chest. She knelt with her fingers gripping the wooden bars and choked back tears.

“So what’s your plan now?” Ranger continued behind her.

“Plan ain’t changed. Just-” Daryl evaluated himself sternly for a moment. He was sore, weak, tired and still not out of the woods as far as infection and fever went. “-We gotta hole up for a while, s’all” he admitted shortly, putting a hand over the sickly heat seeping out of the bandage on his thigh. Ranger nodded. If there had been a test somewhere in his seemingly innocuous questions, they'd passed. 

“Well, you’re welcome to take your ease here, all of ya. Lay up for a while. When you’re feelin’ up to it, we got a spare cabin. It’s got a shower, bit of a kitchen. Hate for you to keep on sleepin’ in an armchair when we got perfectly good beds” he added aside to Beth, and then froze when he saw her tear-streaked face. He automatically reached for her, causing Daryl to stir. She waved it off.

“Thank you, for everything, Ranger, really. We appreciate it” she forced her voice to be steady.

He glanced at Daryl, who was looking uncomfortably at his plate, and then again at Beth, who sniffed and gave him a watery smile. Daryl made no move to comfort her, to stand and hold her, and Ranger obviously thought it was strange. 

“Alright then-” Ranger said slowly, eyeing Daryl again. “-Well, y’all jus’ holler if you need anythin’”

Beth thanked him again. Neither of them spoke until they heard Ranger’s boots rapping down the hall. Judith cooed, breaking the silence. She grabbed at her feet and giggled.

“So. When did we get married?” she asked the wall abruptly. Daryl muttered something darkly and put the plate on the floor so he could settle back on the bed, ignoring her. “Seriously, Daryl, if they’re gunna be askin’ questions, we should at least have our story straight” she argued at him. He murmured wordlessly and shut his eyes pointedly. She stared at him angrily, but it soon became apparent she could get no more out of him, so instead she collected Judith’s dirty nappy and took her to go and make up a bottle, leaving Daryl to sleep. At the door, she stopped and turned around. He was unnaturally still, waiting. 

"What'd'ya think about that Terminus thing? You think maybe...the others...?" 

"Dunno. If yuh lemme fuckin' sleep we'll check it out" he grouched, rolling over. She huffed and left. 

He waited until the door closed behind her, then opened his eyes and ran his hand over his face shakily. He mouthed a curse that Merle used to favour to himself and then said aloud; “ _Mister Greene_....aw shiiiit”


	6. Faith

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daryl meets the rest of the group, and struggles with Hershel's death, his 'marriage' and the opinions of the others.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey all, very slight trigger warning this chapter for some discussion of Carol's domestic abuse, and Daryl being accused of the same. Heads up, stay safe.

Daryl slept through the night and late into the next morning. He was alone when he awoke, with his crossbow propped against the wall by his hand, like Beth had set it in place so it was the first thing he saw. He stared at it while he sat up, swinging his legs out of bed and gingerly stretching his sore leg. There was some clothing; his jeans with a patch on the knee and boots and a new shirt, thrown over the back of the armchair. He pulled them on and used the tiny bathroom before venturing out the door. Down the hall, he could hear voices; he recognised none of them and he would have retreated back into more familiar territory but he was starving and the throbbing pain was kicking back up again. Keeping his crossbow close but not threatening, he limped down the hall and shouldered open the door into a kitchen criss-crossed with bright shards of sunlight beaming through slats in the boards covering the windows. Someone had painted flowers over the slats in front of the kitchen sink and it reminded Daryl of the prison with a painful jolt. Two young woman and a couple of teenage boys were standing around. They all froze when he cautiously paused in the doorway. The younger of the boys helping to dry the dishes the older one was washing, one of the woman frying something that made Daryl’s stomach clench, and the other woman sharpening hunting knives at the table. It was the woman at the table who stood to greet him.

“Howdy. You must be Beth’s husband! I’m Jessie”

He felt warmth tickling his neck and nodded mutely. They all looked uncomfortable at his prolonged silence. Jessie cleared her throat and pushed her green cap back a bit to scratch at her hairline awkwardly.

“Well, anyhow, this here is Maurice, Tommy and Liza. Maurice was with the crew that bought you here. You hungry?”

“Where’s Beth an’ the baby?” he demanded instead, voice gruff from disuse.

Luckily Jessie seemed to recognise the seriousness in his shoulders, the hand steady on the butt of his weapon and showed her hands.

“They’re both fine, I promise. They’re checking out the cabin Uncle Range and Billy cleared out for the two of you. We weren’t sure how long y’all’d’be stayin’ so...”

Daryl looked up at the others. Maurice had nervous fingers and quick, darting eyes, a crew cut grown out around his ears and lifted a hand as if to tip his hat to Daryl, only to remember halfway he wasn’t wearing one and settling for scratching his eyebrow instead. Tommy sank closer to Liza at the introduction, the resemblance between the siblings uncanny; both were lean and strong-limbed like young trees, sun-bleached curls and hazel eyes. Carefully, he set his crossbow against the nearest chair at the table.

“I could eat” he accepted as gracefully as he knew how.

Liza had cooked a kind of griddle cake in the frying pan and Daryl drowned them in honey fresh from the comb. Maurice blushed as Jessie sang his praises for keeping the bees. Daryl grunted appreciatively and watched as Jessie settled back to sharpening knives. She was quick and practised, the motions second nature. It wasn’t long before they heard voices, quiet and steady, following the louder clump of boots up the steps into the kitchen.

“-first damn good shower I’d had in a long time and hand to God it felt better’n’ anything else I’d ever felt!” Ranger was declaring.

Beth’s laugh was unsure but genuine. Daryl stopped eating at the sound of it, straightening to reassure himself of her presence. It was Jessie and Liza’s grins that made him remember what they thought of him, what Ranger thought of him, and he sank back into his chair, scowling.

“We got used to not having water on the road, but we got spoiled at the prison I guess. I really owe you for the clothes too-” Beth ducked inside as Ranger held the door for her.

“You don’t owe us nothin’ lil lady-ah! Weeelll now, look who’s up and in to Liza’s griddle! Y’all better’ve saved some fer Sean! Nobody wants to see the kangaroo box”

This seemed to be a running joke, because everyone laughed and Liza gestured to the steaming plate of griddle cakes waiting on the bench. Daryl didn’t notice, because he was trying not to stare at Beth. She was fresh out of a shower, her white-blonde hair braided wetly back from her face, her face clean and pink, and her clothes were clean. She had a yellow polo shirt and a white cardigan, her old jeans scrubbed clean and new fluffy socks poking out the top of her cowboy boots. She grinned widely at him and he felt his lips tug without his permission in reply. She slid into a seat beside him and stole one of his griddle cakes right off his plate. She used to do that at the prison: not just to him, to everyone, when she sat down with Judith at the table. He glared at her and shifted his plate instinctively. Her eyes shone at him and he felt himself helpless in the face of that expression. He shook it off and turned away from her.

“Where’s Judith?” he asked, looking down at his plate instead of at Beth.

“With Billy” she replied.

“Who thuh fuck is Billy?” he snarled, going still like a predator once more. He felt cutting betrayal as he held Beth’s gaze. They were supposed to look after Judith, he could barely look after himself right now, and she’d gone and left Lil Asskicker with someone he didn’t know, didn’t trust.

Beth quailed slightly before his sharp voice, wide-eyed, opening and closing her mouth as she tried to force words out. Somebody made a small sound and Daryl looked around, fist opening and clenching on the tabletop. The first face he landed on was Liza’s and she looked horrified, reluctant, angry. He knew that look. He looked at Beth, panic cutting his throat because they used to look at Carol like that, back when Ed was alive.

“I didn’t-” he started reluctantly, unsure of what to say. 

Billy and Sean chose that moment to enter, and in the older man’s arms perched Judith, babbling happily. Her clothes were a little big, but clean. She probably thought the grey-bearded old man was Hershel, thought Daryl with a pang that wasn’t all physical as he stood quickly, his eyes on Judith. Beth stood too, her chair legs scraping the ground. He cringed hard when she put her hand on his arm, torn between looking at her and not taking his eyes off the baby. The strangers waited in trepidation to see what happened next. Ranger looked about to speak.

“Daryl, it’s okay, I promise. She was bein’ grabby and Billy distracted her for me so's I could have a shower. Wouldn’t kill ya tuh have a little faith you know” she tried to joke.

“Yeah, faith-” The hunter gave her a sharp look as he drawled that and limped a few paces towards Billy, who slid Judith into his reaching arms after a moment’s hesitation that made Daryl grit his teeth. Anger and hurt bubbled up against his jaw. “- _Faith_ ain’t done shit for us. Sure as hell did nothin’ fer ya father”

He pulled Judith close, the baby going quiet as if she could sense his continued unease, and Beth inhaled sharply, pained. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Jessie open her mouth as if to berate him as he deserved and he braced himself for it, but something stopped her because she snapped her teeth together to shut them. It left Daryl with only one option. He steeled himself and looked at Beth, who was still standing by the table looking hurt. She shuttered her features when he met her gaze. He swallowed and jerked his head towards the door she’d come from.

“Uh, you wanna get some sleep, I can look aft’r Lil Asskicker fer a while” he muttered.

Beth nodded, gave a wobbly illusion of her usual bright smile and took the griddle cake she’d been eating off the edge of his plate. He quickly pulled his mostly clean bandana out of the pocket where he’d left it and gestured questioningly at the ones left on the bench, making shy eye contact with Liza, who pursed her lips but nodded. Beth walked past him to put the plate in the sink; people were finding actions to do around the room while Beth and Daryl’s drama played out. He grimaced as he tapped her shoulder with the cakes wrapped in his bandana. She ignored him and his face burned hot, but he did it again. Finally, she took it, studied it and gave him a quick nod. He bounced Judith as Beth left and swallowed, avoiding the gazes of all the strangers in the room. He felt sick and claustrophobic, standing there with Judith silent in his arms, her big blue eyes gazing around. 

“How’d her father die?” Jessie asked stonily.

Daryl didn’t turn around at first. He stood at the sink and replayed the scene in his head; Rick’s pleading, the Governor’s violent movements, the stoic acceptance on Hershel’s face that they could see even from the fence. The spray of blood...

“Got his head cut off wi’ a sword” he said bluntly, turning and walking back out without meeting any one's gaze.

He went back to the med room and found some strong antiseptic to pour straight onto his wounds. He was studying the jagged scrape on the outside of his arm when there was a knock at the door. He stepped out, throwing his shirt back on around his shoulders and setting his crossbow within reach before opening the door to admit Jessie. Daryl looked suspicious, but Jessie didn’t speak at first. He raised an eyebrow, gave a _suit-yourself_   kind of shrug and returned to tending his injuries.

“You need a hand?” she broke the silence, standing in the doorway. Daryl glanced up, not liking the way she was standing between him and Judith. He leaned back to look past her and check on the baby, before straightening and meeting her cold gaze head-on.

“Naw, I got it” he said.

“You ever hit her?” were her next words, meant to make an impact.

Daryl didn’t startle or get angry. He finished dragging pus and poison from the cut with a cloth, put it on the edge of the sink and turned to face her. He let her look him right in the eye, let her dig past all his scars and masks and bared-teeth aggression. 

“I ain’t ever laid a hand on her. My old man, he used to beat the hell outta me’n’my bro’her. I wouldn’t do that to Beth. Or Judith” he added as an afterthought, remembering the baby was supposed to be his daughter. He was quiet and vehement, and Jessie apparently believed him because she nodded.

“Sorry to ask” she admitted, shuffling her feet.

“Naw. Glad yuh did. Seen people jus’ stan’ by an’ let it happen” he said, thinking sourly of Carol again. It made his stomach hurt and he picked up the cloth again.

“I’ll make you up a kit with some bandages and stuff, antibiotics. Beth knows her way around a dressing. Sure you don’t want any help with that?” He met her offer with a small head shake. He was feeling tired again. “I can take you over to the cabin we got for y’all, if yuh want? It’s two rooms, so you won’t wake Beth” she said then.

Daryl nearly declined and then reminded himself once more he was supposed to be married. With a nod, he buttoned his shirt back up and collected Judith. With his crossbow slung over his shoulder, he followed Jessie out of the administration building, out into the sunlight. 


	7. Break

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daryl, Beth and Judith move into their new home. Daryl mourns in the only way he knows how and Beth holds him together.

Daryl paused on the porch of the main house to take in his surrounds. There were two vehicles; a big Chevy truck and a van, parked outside, and Maurice was under the hood of the truck, cursing. The immediate area was a wide lawn between the admin buildings and a log cabin with a sign that had fallen off its hinges and been set to the side saying Mess Hall. The grass was overgrown and Ranger and Sean were at work in a vegetable patch beside the mess. To their right was a set of iron gates; a few Walkers butted up against the bars, and Tommy was walking that way with Billy, both of them holding machetes. Beside the gate, a watch platform was built out of crates and rope, accessed via the roof of a car without wheels parked close to the wall. The wall itself, about seven feet tall, encircled everything, leading around to their left where three neat alleys of wood cabins sat welcomingly. Daryl could also see the tin roof of a shed glinting in the sunlight, tucked behind the angle of the house. He covered Judith’s eyes against the bright sunlight and followed Jessie, who was waiting patiently for him.

“So, it’s pretty small, I mean what ya see is what ya get; mess hall there, we don’t use for much really, keep the guns there. It’s got a basement though, which we figure we’ll tuck ourselves in if somthin’ goes wrong. There’s a laundry out the back here, and a water tank at the back of the hall there-”

“What’s in the shed?” growled Daryl, pausing to tip his chin at it. Jessie looked confused at the way his face had gone dark.

“Uh, place used to be a rehab facility, so it’s got art stuff, some hiking gear, some canoes, camping gear. Most of the tents had rotted when we got here though” she said, looking sour about that. Daryl gave the shed another long look when her back was turned, figured he’d check it out for himself when night fell and limped off. They’d reached the first of the three lines of huts, four to a row, twelve all told.

“So, we got Tommy and Maurice in that one, Uncle Range across from them, me and Liza next door to him and Sean beside us, and then Billy across the way. You and Beth are down here. Beth said Judith’s got a set of lungs on her, so we put you a little ways down. Course, we totally believe it’s Judith that’ll be makin’ all the noise” Jessie teased with a toothy grin.

Daryl clenched his jaw and said nothing. She laughed at his silence and they walked the rest of the way to the 'Greene’s' allocated cabin in silence. She slung the bag she had on her shoulder with Daryl’s medical supplies off her shoulder and slid it onto his, beside his crossbow. He nodded his thanks and hitched Judith further up his hip, stepping up onto the little porch. Realising Jessie was still standing behind him, he stopped with a hand on the doorknob. She was studying him with slanted eyes, like there were pieces of him not fitting the way she’d expected, her head tilted as if a different angle would make the strange juts fall into place. Starting at his eyes on her, she flailed backwards and thumbed back towards the main house. “A’rig’t, jus’, yanno, holler if yuh need anythin’...yup. Okay” she turned abruptly and walked away.

Daryl watched her leave, his eyes flicking sideways towards the shed. He opened the door with his eyes still calculating the exits around him, and stepped quietly inside. The cabin smelt of dust and a little mildew, but also clean linen and wood smoke. The first room had a couch and a small table with three chairs in the corner, a pot-belly stove, a sink and cupboards. Beside the kitchen bench was a door that led to an shower and toilet. There was no rug on the plain timber floor, and the breeze whistled under the slats. A sliding divider on the other side of the room was halfway open and through the gap, Daryl could see Beth laying on the double bed. She was frowning, her mouth slightly open, her slender hands cradling her head. She was beautiful and young and bright as the sun outside and her eyes brilliant blue when they opened. Seeing it was him, she gave a small smile making a movement as if to sit up until he shook his head. She rolled over and curled up with her back to him.

He put his crossbow and the bag on the table and lowered himself onto the couch. It seemed comfortable enough. He figured he could sleep there. Judith immediately rolled onto her back when he put her down, looked surprised at this turn of events, and turned back over onto her hands and knees, valiantly trying to work out her little arms and legs in order to move forward. He chuckled at her, had to catch her before she landed on her face right on the hard floor. He took a blanket off the back off the couch and laid her on that, wincing as he lowered himself to sit on the floor with her. As Judith flipped herself onto her back and stared up at him, giving him a gummy grin when he tickled her belly, he found himself thinking of Rick. The last he’d seen him, he’d been diving for cover behind the overturned bus by the gates as the tank rolled into the sanctuary. He pressed a fist to his mouth, closing his eyes as he traced the movements he remembered from the gunpowder, bloodied seconds as the prison fell. Michonne had been outside of the fence. Hershel was dead. Maggie covering Beth as Beth ran for the bus. Glenn, Bob, Sasha, Tyreese, the kids. Beth said she’d found Judith alone in her carrier, not a soul in sight. about to be Walker chow.

He wondered if anyone was heading for Terminus, whether or not it was worth heading for at all. When Judith began to whinge, he made her up a bottle and put her to sleep on the couch, enclosing her with one of the seat cushions so she would roll off the side. He took a cinnamon stick out of the side of his pack and went to sit out on the porch to clean the mechanisms of his crossbow and sharpen his knife, whiling away the time. Half an hour later, soft bare feet tapped on the floor and the door creaked. Beth slipped outside.

“Hey” she greeted him.

He gave her a nod and put away the bolt he’d been trying to fix the fletching on. “Reckon we should check that shed out” he said as she sat down beside him, squinting.

“Why’s tha-oh. In case they...like Daddy” Beth nodded understandingly at his affirmative grunt and hugged her middle.

“How’s yuh leg?” she asked then. He ran his fingers over the wound under the denim as if to check.

“Hurts” he muttered in response, forcing the word out against his own nature, and jerked away when she lifted her hand towards his face to test his temperature.

She stopped with her hand still raised between them and patiently waited for him to acquiesce. He met her gaze and shifted back to centre. Slowly, she rested her knuckles on his temple. He watched her mouth purse and twist with a buck in his pulse. She was so close. She smelt like cheap soap, clean, the sweet, warm smell of sleep.

“You’re still real warm. How ya feelin’ other than the pain?” He shrugged, turning his attention to his bow.

“S’fine. Jus’ tired. Jessie gimme some shit fer it” he thumbed to indicate inside.

“Go take some and get some sleep. I’ll stay’n’ watch. Oh, well, not that we really have to” she nodded at the gate. Tommy was standing on top of the platform beside the gate with a rifle.

“We should keep our own watch fer a bit” he suggested, following her gaze.

She sighed. “There are good people in the world, Daryl” she said sadly, but she didn’t disagree.

“I think all the good people died” he said, standing and going inside. He hurt both inside and out, feeling her gaze on the back of his neck. Judith was asleep on the couch; he watched her as he swallowed a couple of the pills, her tiny, gentle little breaths, her twitching fingers, her cherub face painted like a Chinese canvas with her eyelashes and pink lips. He pulled his boots off and fell onto the bed. It smelt like Beth. He grabbed the other pillow and buried his face in it.

When he woke up, it was to Beth’s singing. He blinked heavily, wiping his face clear of sleep and squinting at the lengthened shadows turning the dust motes swirling in the sun beams to golden flecks. There was a single window in the bedroom, facing west, so the sunset punched into the room. The divider had been closed, and Beth looked up at the sound of him opening it and smiled thinly. He nodded to her and grabbed a bottle of water from the table and sat himself down. He picked up the bolt he’d been working on earlier and studied the line of it.

“So...you know, how...when I said they’d be askin’ questions about how we’re ‘sposed to be married?”

He tensed, fingers tightening on the bolt and looked across at her through his fringe.

“Wha’d’yuh say?” he sighed out, resigned to it.

He’d already admitted to himself that it was a good ruse; it kept them together, tucked out of the way of the rest of them. The separation gave him room to breathe, made it easier to figure out their next move. It didn’t mean he had to like it.

“I said we got married when I’s eighteen-” she blurted out, wincing. He screwed up his face, but gave a sharp nod. She breathed a short sigh of relief. “-I said you and your brother used to hunt on my Daddy’s land”

“Yeah, yuh tell ‘em how yuh Daddy rea’ted when an ol’ man started shackin’ up wi’ his daug’der?” he spat. She didn't reply to that, just sat picking at stray fluff on the couch. He turned his attention back to his gear, scrutinising his knife sheath and blade. 

“I need a drink” she announced abruptly. Her hands felt clammy and she wiped them on her thighs, remembering Daryl’s fingers brushing the denim when he’d taken his crossbow off her. He tossed her a water bottle from the table. “No, I mean a real drink. As in, alcohol. I’ve never had one....coz of, my Dad. But, he’s not exactly ‘round anymore, soo...”

She sounded abruptly young, bratty, and their ruse wrapped around his throat like a noose, so he said nothing. The mention of Hershel made his bones ache. He was still tired, pulled thin, desperate in a resigned way, like holding onto the edge of a cliff because instinctual preservation had locked his fingers there, but his arms were tired, the drop below his dangling, heavy legs clutching his ankles and dragging down. He needed Rick, Carol, Glenn, and having already given them up for dead, the responsibility of caring for Beth and Judith was barbed wire wrapped around his limbs. He said nothing. Beth was staring at him, waiting for him to do something or say something. When he didn’t, she huffed and stood up, grabbing her boots from beside the door. Of course, she’d left her boots at the door, like a well-bought up Southern girl, while he’d just tracked dirt through the house without a second thought.

“Where yuh goin’?”

“See if anyone has got alcohol” she tossed at him and walked out, letting it shut behind her. Anger bubbled in his veins, looking between Judith and the closed door. He launched himself to his feet and then out, throwing the door open with a bang. She stopped at the bottom of the steps at the sound and turned with a mulish expression on her face.

“Wha’d’yuh want from me, girl?! Huh?” he snarled, his blue eyes not hidden by his usual scowl. Her bright face blackened with fury and she stepped back up onto the porch. He backed up to shut the door behind him. This was developing to be a screaming match. He wished they could go somewhere else, somewhere away from Judith, but all he wanted to do was shake her. He'd sworn to Jessie he'd never laid a finger on her, and he never would. He'd keep that promise. 

“I want you to stop actin’ like you don’t give a crap about anythin’! Like nothin’ we went through matters! Like none of the people we lost meant anythin’ to you! It’s _bullshit_!” Beth’s voice rose defiantly, her eyes like lightning.

“Is that what yuh think?” because that hurt, his voice hitched with it, and his rage got worse because the only way he’d ever dealt with things that hurt was to wrap the pain in anger. Beth was starting to cry, backing up when Daryl advanced on her. Some part of Daryl felt satisfied, but the rest of him boiled with disgust at himself. “That’s what I know” she snapped at him. They stared at one another, both trembling, both shaken and covering it with anger.

“You don’ know nuthin’!” Daryl shouted.

“I know you look at me an’ you just see another _dead_ girl! I’m not _Michonne_ , I’m not _Carol_ , I’m not Maggie-” she wavered on her sister’s name and straightened her spine, getting into his face, standing her ground. He hesitated, her words twisting like a knife in his gut. “-I survived and you don’t get it because I’m not like _you_ or _them_...but I made it. And you don’t get to treat me like crap just because you’re a-afraid!”

 _Afraid_! The word hit him like a slap in the face. He advanced on her again, predatory rage seeping out of his mouth as words, meaningless words that didn’t ring as true as he’d hoped.

“’m not afraid of nuthin’!”

She stared at him, saw past the words, past the wall of anger he was trying in vain to erect between them.

“I remember” her words stopped him short, like a knife to his throat. “When that lil girl came outta the barn. After my mom. You were like me-” she’d seen in him then a kindred spirit, behind the filth and savagery, he’d been just as soft and weak and breakable as her. “-And now God forbid you ever let anyone get too _close_ ” her anger rose again, and so did his.

“Too close, huh? You know all about that. You lost two boyfriends and you can’t even shed a tear!-” and they’d both been boys, Jimmy and Zack, despite the world they’d been living in, not like Daryl. _I don’t cry anymore, Daryl_ she’d said, and he’d been so glad then because Zack had been his responsibility but he’d lost him to the cracked, rotting maws of the Walkers, his responsibility to tell her. He’d been relieved when she hadn’t cried, and now all he wanted was to see her face break down into a wave of wretched sobs.  
“-Your whole family’s gone, all you can do is go out looking for hooch like some dumb college bitch!”

“Screw you, you don’t get it”

“No you don’t get it!-” everything changed when she saw Daryl’s body eject that statement, reject it like an organ that didn’t fit, leaving things chaotic and broken and weak in it’s wake. “-Everyone we know’s dead!”

“You don’t _know_ that!” she screamed: she believed that in the same way she’d believed in the prison, clung to it the same way she’d forced herself to unpack her bag.

“Might as well coz yer never gunna see ‘em ‘gain!-” her sob didn’t give him pause; he was finally getting her to react and it burned him because he felt himself breaking too, like making her feel was a ruse as fake as their marriage, like he needed to exorcise the infection of the prison from his own body and this was the only way he could. He shouted Rick’s name then like a prayer, screwed salt into the wound in Beth’s soul that was Maggie, because Rick was as much his brother as Maggie was her sister and they were both gone “- _Rick_! You ain’t ever gunna see Maggie ‘gain”

“Daryl, just stop!” she cried, reaching for him, but he swung away, threw her off, vaguely registered that Judith was crying inside.

“ _No_! Governor rolled righ’ up ta our gates...maybe if I wouldna stopped lookin’...maybe...coz I gave up, tha’s on me”

Of course he blamed himself, she thought, wanting to hold him as she realised his shoulders were shaking as he tried to tamp down tears. She breathed his name and touched him again, and the sound that limped from his throat, choked and high, was nothing short of a whimper.

“ ‘nd yer Dad...maybe...-” he risked a tiny glance at her, and her emotion-bruised face felt like that crossbow bolt had when it snapped through his flesh. “-Maybe I coulda done somethin’”

He was facing the wall, where Judith was inside crying, and pleaded with the faceless timber before him. Beth let another sob out and hit him, wrapped her arms around his middle as tightly as she could, holding him like she was expecting him to push her away. He lifted his face to the roof, tears glistening on his cheeks, and felt her bury her face between the wings on his back.


	8. Shine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Beth had her first drink and feelings are admitted as they build a story for the rest of the group.

Everyone was trying to stare at them subtly when Daryl and Beth entered the main kitchen. It wasn’t like they wouldn’t have heard their screaming match, or the emotional train wreck that had followed. The best they could hope for was that their hosts wouldn’t mention it. Beth went right up to Liza and offered help while Daryl stood by the door and shuffled his feet awkwardly. He hadn’t cried in a long time, and in the aftermath of it his hands were shaking and his throat was raw. Beth had cried herself out too, and her face was still blotchy, eyes red and swollen, but she smiled despite it, smiled through it like gritted teeth. He didn’t even want to think about what his own face looked like, since his skin felt stiff with dry salt and everywhere else felt numb.

But when Beth gave him a smile as she handed him a plate it went through him like a shot of whiskey.

It felt alien, to be sitting down to a meal again with people they knew, to have full stomachs at the end of it, and stand to help clear the table and wash up the dishes. The group didn’t ask much about Daryl and Beth, though it was obvious they were all dying too. Beth carried most of the conversation, while Daryl gave short replies when directly addressed. He inched out of the glut of people once he’d done his bit to help clear up, going to stand by one of the windows while Beth chatted with Liza and Sean. He must have drifted into his own thoughts, because suddenly, Sean was calling his name.

“Man, you have failed as a husband and a human being. How could she not have had a drink before?!” Sean demanded, grinning.

Daryl flicked his eyes up to Beth, who was bright red and wide-mouthed. He bit down on a smirk at her gaping expression. 

“Oh, we're gunna fix this. There’s some schnapps in here, you know! I’ve been trying to think of something to cook with it” Liza announced.

He sighed as the group cajoled Beth into sitting down at the table. She was looking at the bottle with an expression of trepidation on her face, fingers grasping at the glass Jessie set down for her. Her face tilted upwards and found his, a cutting expression on her face. A surge of protectiveness ran through his bones and he reached over and plucked the bottle off the table, studying the label with a screwed up face.

“Ain’t gunna have your first drink, it’ll be no peach schnapps. You ‘bout ready to break out that ‘shine you been squirrellin’ away, Billy?”

Everyone laughed at the look of surprise on Billy’s face. Daryl had found the stash when he’d checked out the shed, six or seven jars in a crate and he could spot a ‘shine drinker. With Ranger’s mock-reluctant permission, Sean and Billy went to get the crate, while Daryl slipped out to check on Judith, who was being looked after by Tommy in the cabin closest to the kitchen, which he shared with Maurice. There was a party-like atmosphere when he re-entered the kitchen. Sean poured Beth a drink as Jessie clapped. They fell quiet as Beth took her first sip.

“That’s the most horrible thing I’ve ever tasted” she announced with a lilt in her voice like half a laugh.

Mirth abounded. Daryl’s mouth curled up at the corner, briefly, and then sunk back into his usual half-scowl. Sean whooped encouragingly and Jessie thumped her on the back, even though she managed not to cough. She wrinkled her nose adorably down at the glass and then knocked the rest back.

“Second round’s better” she decided with a smile. Old Billy chuckled.

“We’ll make a ‘shine drinker out of you yet, Missus Greene” he declared, raising his own jar.

“Ah, jus’ drink lotsa water” muttered Daryl, edging further into the room to take up his position at the window.

“Yes, Mister Dixon” Beth parroted mockingly, buoyed by the good mood of the people around her, and bit on the words with a silent grimace as soon as they’d left her mouth. The lines around Daryl’s eyes tightened. Beth had enough forethought to keep her face down so the others didn’t see her horrified expression. She closed her eyes, swallowing down the taste of moonshine washed out by burning fear, and wracked her brains for some way to save her lie.

“Dixon?” asked Ranger. He didn’t look suspicious, just curious, looking between them.

“I took ‘er name, when we got hitched” Daryl explained calmly, gesturing at Beth.

She looked up, releasing a held breath quietly as she could from her nose. Thank God for his razor sharp mind, she thought, smiling thankfully at him. He shrugged at her expression, looking out through the slats in the timber.

“That’s really interesting. Why? If you don’ mind my askin’” said Liza.

“ ‘respe’ted her old man a lo’ more’n’I respect’d my own” Daryl told them roughly, shooting an expression out the group at large that forbade further questioning. Beth began to pour another glass and he frowned at her. “Hey, slow down”

“This one’s for you” she told him brightly.

“Nah, ‘m good” he waved her off, eyes flicking around the room as if for something to distract him. He was secretly impressed by her guile; the first time Merle had fed him white lightning, he’d choked on it. Her frown was a wrinkle between her pale brows, turning down the corners of her mouth.

“Why?” she asked, sounding hurt, and the sentiment echoed around the table. He frowned at her, but addressed everyone.

“Someone’s gotta keep watch”

“Ah, c’mon, mate. Tommy’s got ya kid for the night, and Ranger don’t drink coz he’s a light-weight poor bastard-” Sean wheedled.

“Light-weight, huh? You’re one to talk, Skippy” teased Ranger, but gave Daryl a look that said it was up to him. Jessie watched Daryl deliberating and then pushed her jar over to Liza’s side.

“Look, I’ll even call it a night and go give Tommy a hand. Relax, Daryl, share your wife’s first drink!”

He peeled a splinter off the slat his shoulder was set against and shook his head at them. Beth stood, steadily, and plucked one of the mason jars off the table, rounding the edge of it to offer it to him.

“ _Baby_ , this is the first time in ages where you don’t have to keep your girls safe. You might as well make the best of it”

She was practically _fluttering her damned lashe_ s at him, and they were gunna have to have a very serious, grown-up damn discussion about boundaries, because the way she said ‘your girls’ sent a shot of something white hot and alive through his veins. It was worse than any drug he’d ever shot up or smoked in his life, because unlike all of the stuff Merle'd talked him into, or he followed Merle into, this felt _clean_. She must have seen some of the resolve crumble in his face because her small smile brightened up wide and she lifted the mason jar higher. He glanced around the room at the others; Ranger lifted an eyebrow at him, smirking, and Sean had a wide, shit-eating grin plastered on his face matched only by Jessie's. He flicked the bit of splinter he’d peeled off the slat away and reached out to take the mason jar from Beth.

“Yeah. Might as well make the best of it”

He slid his fingers briefly across her soft skin to take the jar, selfish and greedy for just a moment. Sean gave a short cheer and leaned over to clink his jar against Daryl’s as he took a seat beside Beth.

“Here’s to new friends and all that cliché shit, aye? Cheers!” he chorused. Noises of agreement rang around the table. Ranger lifted his steaming coffee mug when Daryl glanced over at him.

“So, Sean, where are you from? I mean, your accent...” Beth asked, gesturing.

“Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, mate. Was here on a bloody holiday, wouldya believe. Got stuck in Atlanta tryna get home when everythin’ went to shit. Airports man, Jey-sus H. Keeyy-rist. What a clusterfuck” he explained.

“Oh. God, I’m sorry. That must have been awful”

He shrugged good-naturedly. It took a lot to rattle him.

“Nah, she’s right. Everyone I know’s in a place called Coober Pedy. Middle of the middle of the middle of farkin’ Whoop Whoop, yanno. She’ll be right”

“ ‘She’ll be right’ is like Sean’s answer to everything” giggled Liza. Daryl wondered if the teen was crushing on the young man as he shrugged.

“Aussie catch phrase that one”

“What about you two?” asked Jessie from the kitchen where she was brewing coffee.

“Daddy’s farm was east a bit, of the prison we ended up for a while. It...it got overrun” Beth explained.

“Yuh ever had any issues with herds?” Daryl asked Ranger. 

“Of the dead’uns? Yeah, a few. Not since we settled here though. Biggest we ever seen must’ve been fifty or so strong”

“One that took the farm had a few hund’ed. Was like nuthin’ I ever seen ‘fore” Daryl said and took a long hit of the moonshine. It was a good brew, sharp and burned all the way down.

“Okay, so it’s gotta be asked-” Liza started, leaning over towards Beth and grinning. Her eyes were already starting to cloud with the drink. “-How’d you two end up toge’her?”

“Leave it ‘lone, doll” cautioned Sean, giving her a gentle shove.

“No seriously, come on! I mean you guys are kinda the odd couple, no offence. Beth said you and your brother used to hunt on her Dad’s farm” she insisted. Beth glanced at Daryl, who was glaring at the bottom of his glass. Liza huffed when they continued to say nothing.

“Stabbed maself on an arrow, firs' time we met proper” Daryl grunted abruptly.

A strange expression crossed Beth’s face; half amused from the incredulous reactions of their hosts, half torn because she’d seen Daryl in his madness looking for Sophia, seen how much he’d ripped himself apart.

“How in the hell did you manage that?!” chuckled Ranger.

“Fell downa ravine. Managed to drag myself to the house, all bust’d up an’ bleedin’ everywhere. Hershel patched me up-” he hesitated, looking at Beth, and then forced himself to continue. “-Look’d up when I was still punch-drunk an’...she was standin’ there in the doorway. Thought I musta been dead fer sure”

Liza sighed dreamily while the men applauded Daryl’s ridiculous pain tolerance. Beth didn’t take her eyes off him, because he was looking right at her. She’d never realised how intense his gaze could be. It sat in her chest like a fire burning in a pit and spread south in a hurry. Her mouth was so dry she had to swallow a few times before she could form words.

“You thought I was an _angel_?” she said, incrediously, injecting a note of teasing in her voice just in time, so he could brush it off if he wanted. She hoped he wouldn’t. She hoped he was admitting that maybe, just maybe, he hadn’t seen right through her until this moment, when his eyes landed on her and etched onto her skin.

“Or sumthin’” he said and took a long drag of ‘shine, a dusty heat on his cheekbones. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ooohhh to be continued *winks*


	9. Miss You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "You're gunna miss me so bad when I'm gone Daryl Dixon"

“Your turn, Missus Greene, how’d you fall for the older man skewering himself on your land?” teased Jessie, jumping up to sit on the kitchen bench facing them, swinging her legs.

“Aw hell, Imma go back out on watch if we’re talkin’ sappy stuff” called a new voice from outside the door. 

The door snapped as Maurice entered, setting his rifle against the wall. Jessie gave him a gentle shove and thumbed at the plate they’d set aside for him and Tommy, warming in the oven. He noticed the jars on the table as he tucked into the rabbit stew.

“Holy shit, I’m definitely stayin’ on watch. And wakin’ y’all with a drum at dawn”

“Don’t even play, smart-ass. ‘sides, it’s Beth’s first drink” said Liza, shooting him a warning glare. He eyed the table again, chewing thoughtfully.

“Well, in that case, best y’all carry on. You havin’ a few, Range?”

“Naw, I’ll take ya over at midnight. Assumin’ I can tuck this rowdy bunch in ‘fore then” he replied with a broad smile.

“The way this shit’s hittin’ mate I’ll put meself to bed. Probably on the porcelain bus” announced Sean, sounding a touch unstable. Daryl chuckled at that, feeling warm and uneven himself, not half bad considering the nasty turn his life had taken lately.

“I do declare! The man can smile!” cried Jessie, grinning at him.

“Naw, don’t. Git yore eyes checked” he shot back.

“Mhm, don’t get used to it. Daryl only smiles for manly things like eight-point buck and new bolts” Beth ribbed, tucking her boots against his thigh.

Before he could think too hard on it, he picked up her feet by the ankles and laid them on his lap. He snuck a glance at her while Maurice made a joke about Ranger being the closest thing to a doctor they had, and wouldn’t he look fine in a white coat. She looked away when he did, a blush high on her cheeks, surprised and pleased at the gesture.

“Okay, okay, nice try, but not even Maurice’s filthy fantasies is gunna save you from tellin’ your side of the story, Beth Greene!” Liza bought their attention back to the newcomers.

“What, when I fell for Daryl? I don’t know...-” Beth admitted slowly, watching Daryl for any kind of reaction. He hunched his shoulders as Liza snorted disbelievingly at Beth’s statement. He expected she’d make something up, even if he’d told his own story truthfully. “-I really don’t! Truly. Daryl scared the hell out of me when I first met him, running around in our woods with that crossbow shootin’ things, guttin’ them on our lawn. But..., but I knew the first time I saw him with Judith that I was gunna be with him forever”

He froze at the ring of truth in her words, and gazed at her from under his frown. She smiled at him, softly, unsurely, and his heart stopped for a second. Liza awed beside her, and Beth’s face went red as she ducked her head.“We didn’t know what to call her. Had all these names, but they were all people we’d lost...” Beth explained and then trailed off.

“Di’n’ wanna name ‘er after someone’d died ugly” Daryl muttered, thinking of Carl’s forlorn face listed the names of those who’d fallen, starting with the girl who’d never had the chance to become a woman: Sophia. Then Carol, because they’d given her up for dead. Andrea, Amy, Jacqui, Patricia and Lori. He’d drifted so far into the dark space in his head he didn’t hear Beth continue to talk; it took a loud chuckle from Billy to break him out of it.

“Little Arsekicker?” asked Sean, his Australian accent doing strange things to the moniker. Daryl shrugged.

“She is” he told them firmly. It was impossible for any blood of Rick Grimes’ not to be tough as hell, and Judith had Rick’s bright blue peepers to discard any chance of her being Shane’s.

“And speakin’ as a father, what did your Daddy have to say about you runnin’ away wi’ a man who managed to fall on his own arrow?” enquired Billy teasingly, not realising how much of a sore spot it was. Daryl went hard beneath Beth’s feet, fingers having a spasm on the edge of the table as he refused to meet anyone’s eyes.

“Same thing he said to my sister’s husband; that no man is good ‘nough for his lil girl...-” Daryl flinched. He could hear Hershel saying those words, feel the burn of shame in his stomach. It took a good few seconds for Beth’s next words to soothe through that boiled feeling. “-Until one is. All he ever want’d was for me to be happy. And he loved Daryl”

He couldn’t help the snort of disbelief that came from him then, inspiring laughter right around the table. Beth dug her boot heel into his good leg to make a point.

“He did! I mean, maybe not Before, but he did. He respected the hell out of you for everythin’ you did for us. He did” she insisted.

“Says sommat ‘bout daughters, it takin’ the end of the world for fathers to be okay with their daughters becoming women” chuckled Ranger, making to stand. “Well, I might just call it a night. Maurice, I’ll see you at midnight. Leave your doctor kink at home”

The teenager went crimson and glared at the older man, unable to defend himself around his last mouthful of stew. Ranger grabbed his Stetson off a side table and left with Jessie, who went to relieve Tommy of his baby duties. She insisted that Daryl and Beth take the night off, and maybe it was more the way the drink was clouding up his head than trust that made him agree. Maybe it was the way Beth leaned into him, his arm around her tiny waist keeping her standing, and snagged a last jar of ‘shine as they made the goodbyes later on and headed for their cabin. They stopped in at Tommy and Maurice’s to check on Judith. Beth giggled too loud and Daryl had to bite his lip to stop himself laughing out loud. Jessie shooed them out with a wide smile and a knowing glint in her eye.

“Stop a sec, here. It’s a nice night, we shoul-here, outside, c’mere’n’sit with me. C’mon” Beth tugged him down to sit on the steps up to their cabin and handed him the jar. He took a sip and settled with his back to the banister across from her. She had a sweet, blurry smile on her face, eyes closed and head resting on the warped timber. He nudged her with his foot, offering the glass when she opened her eyes. They were startlingly blue in the night.

“You fallin’ asleep already?” he teased.

She glared weakly at him, putting the glass aside. Smart move really, he thought, testing the range of the stitches in his thigh by bringing his knee up towards his chest and resting his wrist on top. 

“No. Not yet...I get why my Dad stopped drinkin’” she said, softly. The quiet of the night had slid over them as they sat with the cool starlight bathing their skin.

“Feel sick?”

“Nope. I wish I could feel like this all the time, but it’s bad” she explained loosely.

“Yer a happy drunk” he said, because of course she was. Even when everything was shit, Beth would find something pretty in it, something shiny to scare away all the dark things. It was addictive.

“Yeah, I’m lucky. Some people can be real jerks when they drink”

He smirked at her from where he was absently pressing the tip of his blade into the wood.

“Yeah, I’m a dick...when ‘m drunk” he admitted, the smirk curling up on his mouth. She smiled back at him, recognising the apology for what it was. He found himself thinking of one of the lies she’d told Liza and Billy and Sean earlier. Between the two of them, they’d built a carefully vague back story for their lives Before, leading into the prison where Judith had been born and then loosing it. Everyone had been understanding about them skirting around the fall of the prison, recognising an open wound.

“You said I’s a mechanic. When Sean ask’d in there” he murmured, looking at her carefully.

“Well, you never did tell Zack wha’ you did” she pointed out. He was quiet for a long time.

“You wanna know wha’ I’s doin’ ‘fore all this? I’s just driftin’ ‘round wi’ Merle, doing’ wha’ever he said we was gunna be doin’ that day. I’s nobody. Nuthin’. Some redneck asshole wi’n even bigger asshole for a brother” he said it and meant it and it hurt like hell. He didn’t expect the complete lack of judgement in her eyes as she looked back at him.

“You miss ‘im, doncha?-” his face was all the reply she needed, the way it quickly shuttered against the wave of pain that came with thinking about Merle. “-I miss Maggie. Miss her bossin’ me ‘round. Miss my big brother. He’s so annoyin’ and’ overprotective. An’ my Dad”

“Betcha I’d’a gotten my ass kick’d I ever made a move on yuh when yer bro an’ yer ol’ man was alive. An’ you sister. Hell, re’kon I’d take on Michonne ‘fore I took on yer sister”

She laughed, the sound bright in the darkness.

“Why, you gun’ make a move, Mister Dixon?” she asked, and she meant it to tease, but it emerged so much more seriously, because she meant it seriously, she realised. She wanted him to make this lie real, to touch her with burning fingertips and that concentrated, smoldering gaze. She’d been with men before, nervous fumbles with Jimmy and stealing heated passion with Zack, but being with Daryl wouldn’t be like that.

“Aw, shit, Beth, don’t. Don’ do that” he pleaded.

“Why not? Not like anybody gunna stop us”

“Yeah, well, I’ll stop it. I ain’t...this...we’re jus’ keepin’ Judith alright. Tha’s all this is, all it’s gun’ be coz I ain’t...” he stopped, frustrated with his inability to string together a coherent sentence.

“You ain’t _what_? Good enough? Coz that’s a damn lie. You are. You’re better’n most men. You just don’t see it”

He swallowed, fumbled, looked away and shrugged. She believed those words, he knew she did. It scared the hell out of him.

“Maybe you gotta keep on remindin’ me sometimes” he muttered. He meant more than that. She meant more than that. She was the thing keeping him steady firstly, and secondly she was a fire burning in his chest, scorching out all the shadows and leaving something new and fresh in the smooth red scars that fire left behind.

“No. You can’t depend on anyone for anythin’, right?-” he looked up at having his own words thrown in his face, blinking. She had a determined look on her face, one that should have been funny for how drunk they were, but really wasn’t. “-I’ll be gone someday”

“Stop” he bit out, begging her for the second time in a few minutes. Merle’s laugh taunted him cruelly.

“I will. You’re gunna be the last man standin’. You are. You’re gunna miss me so bad when I’m gone Daryl Dixon”


	10. Wire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daryl gives Beth a ring.

Two days had turned into ten before Daryl realised how long they’d been with Ranger’s group at the rehab. He and Beth and Judith had slid into an achingly pleasant facade, though Daryl was still insisting on sleeping on the couch. They’d nearly lost their footing twice; when Maurice came to ask Daryl for help with the truck one morning, and Daryl was still asleep on the couch. Luckily for them, Beth had been sitting at the table feeding Judith and seen him coming from the window, giving them enough time to throw the blankets and pillow from the couch onto the bed. The second time came one night at dinner, which was the usual light-hearted affair. Daryl’s skills at hunting and tracking had made him a hero to the group, who’d been relying on Ranger’s ranch-born ability to track escaped cattle and Maurice’s aim with the single-shot rifle for fresh meat. Now they had a steady income of small game from Daryl’s snares and he had started tracking larger game now his leg was starting to heal up.

“Hey, how come you don’t wear a ring?” asked Liza when she handed Beth a plate. She never meant to be nosy, but she’d only had Billy and Tommy for company for months until they’d met up with the others, so having someone new to talk to, and someone closer to her age than Jessie, excited her. Beth enjoyed it too, even though she felt years older than Liza most of the time. Beth started and blinked down at her left hand.

“Huh? Oh! Uh, I-um-lost it. When we were runnin’. From the prison, I mean. There was shooting, I...think I must have taken it off?”

“Aw, geez, that’s a real shame” commiserated Liza, and was then suitably distracted by her brother’s elbow in her ribs for Beth to shoot Daryl a look. He blinked reassuringly at her and sat down, passing potatoes down to Ranger at the head of the table.

“Don’t ‘spose you ever wore one, mucking around in the guts’a cars all day” Sean commented to Daryl. Tamping down his relief at being handed a cover story, rather than having to go along with Beth and ‘losing’ his wedding band, Daryl nodded his agreement and tucked in.

For some reason, it bothered him and over the next couple of days he caught himself staring at Beth’s naked ring finger. It was such a stupid thing, and a pointless gesture anyway when they weren’t even really married, or _together_ beyond co-parenting an infant who was for all intents and purposes an orphan. He told himself firmly that as long as he could keep his damn act together they never would be. Whatever Beth had told him the night she’d had her first drink, when they’d both been loose-lipped on the porch of their little house, he knew she deserved better than a broken down old man. He kept telling himself that as soon as he was fit again, they’d take the car they had stowed in town and they’d get away. Maybe to Terminus, and find their people, or north, like they’d planned. Then they could drop the charade, go back to being reluctant partners.

Beth and Liza were laughing over the laundry when he approached. He had his heart clenched in his fist and his crossbow over his shoulder. She was tangled in a wet sheet as Liza kept wrapping her in it. He stopped by Judith, who was laying on a blanket in the grass and crouched to run a hand over her soft hair. The movement calmed him, and so did the way she sat back on her squat little behind and squawked at him.

“Hey there stranger!” Beth called out to him, laughter still in her voice and he had to prepare himself before he looked up. He was right to. She was standing akimbo as Liza pegged the sheet behind her, exertion making her cheeks red and the sunlight turning her blonde hair into bright silver. He nodded to her and stood up, making a sound under his breath as his side twinged. Concern crossed her face and he waved it off with the fist encircling his prize. Her eyes narrowed at it.

“Yeah, here. I got sum’in’ for yuh”

She wiped her hands unconsciously on her jeans, gravitating towards him curiously. He kept his head ducked so he didn’t have to meet her eyes, something he’d been doing less of lately. Floundering slightly as he wondered if he should have done this differently, he opened his hand without further preamble. Sitting in the centre of his palm was a ring wrought out of soft tie wire and a chip of jasper he’d had rattling around in the pocket of his vest. It had taken him hours to wrangle the wire and secure the coloured stone and the end result was rough-hewn but undeniably pretty.

Beth was concerned at first, confused, by Daryl’s behaviour, and when his fingers blossomed open to reveal the ring, she could be forgiven for the loud, sharp inhale of surprise.

“It ain’t much, I jus’ thought-yuh don’ have to-” he was grumbling, embarrassed at her lack of action, and she stepped closer, staying his hand with hers before he could retreat.

“No, Daryl, it’s beautiful. It’s...you made me a ring?”

He shrugged, but his cheeks were heating up again and it shouldn’t have been possible for a man who could gut a deer in under ten minutes and dispatch Walkers with frightening ease to be adorable. But it was and Beth would stand by that opinion as she smiled and offered him her left hand.

“Well, go on then” she ordered, trying for teasing, but it got lost in breezily, happy excitement. Daryl exhaled something that sounded almost like a laugh. He hesitated before he slid it onto her finger, finally looking at her, with her wind-swept hair and her expectant smile. His heart seized, his jaw going slack.

“Yuh always look so surprised” she commented, softly, and he didn’t have to wonder what she meant. He ducked his head to push the ring onto the finger, hoping she wouldn’t mention how badly his hands were trembling because he was mortified enough for one day. She admired the sun catching on the stone, her fingers framed by Daryl’s large, scarred hand. He was looking down too, then seemed to catch himself and turned his head away, towards Judith. Coming to a decision, Beth raised herself on her toes to kiss his cheek, when Daryl turned back to her, startled by the sudden movement. Their lips touched, edges of flesh breathing over one another, and his mouth was unyielding even as Beth pressed forward carefully, making an accident deliberate. As she rocked back, he chased her mouth with his for an inch before catching himself and drawing away. Their eyes met for a long moment, raw feeling and fear and longing and wonder caught up between them in an indecipherable mess. Daryl stepped away first, cleared his throat and hitched his crossbow.

“ ‘m gunna go check on Tommy” he blustered out gruffly, tipping his chin towards the watch platform. She nodded dumbly, all her words stolen. He tasted like cinnamon.

“I’ll see you” she blurted out and he nodded before striding away. Liza had the good sense to wait until Daryl was out of earshot before bounding over, shrill and joyous, grabbing at Beth’s hand to look and pronouncing the wire and stone jewellery absolutely perfect. A moment later, Jessie came around the edge of the house, grinning in a way that said she’d been watching the whole thing. She had something held in her hand.

“Sorry! Couldn’t resist, is all. Cutest damn thing I ever seen” she declared, holding up a Polaroid photo. “Took it through the peep hole in the kitchen with Maurice’s camera”

The picture had a dark bar across the bottom of it where Jessie had captured the bottom slat of the peep hole, but Beth and Daryl’s blurry outlines were unmistakable. So was Judith’s form at their feet, sitting up. The glare of sunlight on Beth’s hair had formed a halo around her head, and from the angle of his shoulders, the wings on Daryl’s back could just be distinguished. They were both looking down at their joined hands, their expressions unfathomable.

“Oh” said Beth softly. “Thanks” she added when Jessie pressed it into her hand.

“That’s okay. Betcha y’all don’t have any weddin’ photos that survived, huh?” Jessie said sympathetically.

Beth held the small photo in her hand and shook her head.

The picture got propped up on the window sill beside their little kitchen table in the cabin. Daryl saw it when he came in from doing his watch and gazed through the open divider to where Beth was asleep with Judith. His blanket and pillow weren’t laid out on the couch like they usually were; instead, they were resting on the end of the bed. He hung his jacket and vest over the back of the chair and lingered in the doorway, debating fiercely with himself. His ring glinted on the hand she had resting on Judith’s belly.

God help him, it felt so right.

He stepped into the room on silent predator’s feet and sat carefully on the edge of it, looking over his shoulder at them sleeping soundly. Beth was faking it, he knew she was, because they both slept so lightly after the winter on the run that the smallest disturbance jolted them awake. He slept fully clothed on top of the covers with the blanket from the couch covering him and used Judith as a star-fished line between them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The ring looks a lot like this one: http://www.oheverythinghandmade.com/wrapped-peach-aventurine-ring-diy/   
>  The differences being that it's unpolished jasper and steel wire.


	11. Fit Like This

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daryl teaches Beth to track and Hershel is remembered.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahhhhhh! This is my favourite chapter so far, based on my favourite Bethyl moment! Sorry for the wait, please read and review :D

They’d been at the rehab for almost three weeks when they left Judith in Tommy’s capable young hands to go hunting.

Beth was holding Daryl’s crossbow up, more confidence in her walk than she’d had yesterday when he started training her with it, and Daryl followed in her footsteps, eyes on the trail she was supposed to be tracking. The autumn was starting to bite the air and they were both rugged up to the point where they were still mobile.

“Are we close?” Beth asked, sighting along the crossbow as they paused in the yaw of the trail.

“Almost on ‘im” Daryl told her, close enough to her back she could feel his warmth. It felt good, having him so close, and she probably should have gotten used to it, but didn’t want to. He was warm, his body rangy and hard, and sometimes when he whimpered through nightmares she’d touch him and he’d calm. It made her feel powerful like killing Walkers or firing a gun hadn’t even come close to. Lately, she’d taken to tangling their fingers together on the bed, not quite holding hands, but almost. The contact always felt alive, wild as rolling thunderheads, made her want in a way she thought only existed in silly romance thrillers.

“How’d’ya know?” she frowned.

“Signs are all there. Jus’ gotta know how to read ‘em” he said, impatience edging his tone. He was an outstanding teacher, in his own sink-or-swim kind of way. The same way he’d been taught himself, she imagined.

“What’re we trackin’?”

“You tell me-” she dropped the crossbow into a loose cradle, turning to give him an exasperated look that he tried not to be amused at. “-Yer the one wan’ed ta learn” he reminded her.

Wrinkling her nose briefly, she turned back to the trail, eyes falling to the stirred up leaves to the side of the cleared alley in the trees. It was a deer trail widened by human use, Daryl had told her gruffly when they had found the mouth of it. She eyed the exposed dirt thoughtfully.

“Well...sumthin’ came through here. The patterns all zig-zaggy...-” realisation hit her and she smiled brightly, encouraged. “-It’s a Walker!”

“Maybe itsa drunk” muttered Daryl, which was his dry way of telling her she was right. It was as good as a compliment from him and she shouldered the cross bow with renewed vigour.

“ ‘m gettin’ good at this. Pretty soon I won’t need you at all” she announced brightly.

Daryl watched her ponytail shift between her shoulder blades as she moved forward and was surprised to find only part of him agreed with her. The other half caught a glint off the jasper on her left hand and silenced the ugly voice.

“Yeah-” he agreed mockingly and waved a dismissive hand to urge her onwards. “-Keep on trackin’”

The Walker was kneeling, eating something, it’s groans reverberating in the foliage. Daryl and Beth paused in the lee of a pine and watched for a moment.

“It’s got a gun” Beth noted, glancing over her shoulder at Daryl.

His blue eyes were intent on the Walker, laser-focused. He gave her a short nod, eyes flicking to her as she looked back over her shoulder for his response. She was rugged up warmly in thick woollen cardigan, her cheeks flushed red with the autumn chill, eyes bright and hair all tangled and heavy on her shoulders. He looked away under the self-imposed pretence of checking their surrounds. There was a braid looped into her ponytail, pretty and unnecessary. He wondered if it’s silly pointlessness was why she did it. He wondered if she ever made daisy chains—

The sound of the breath rushing out of her was a pained inhale that used to be a scream before she’d learned to be quiet, because sound was deadly. It hit him in the sternum like a set of knuckles wrapped in dusters, like the worst gut punch he’d ever had. He was moving forward as she went down, felt his terror wipe his mind as she bought the crossbow up and fired a shot. It was just off a bullseye and he was so damned proud of her as he furiously barrelled the butt of the bow into the Walkers jaw, whirled and slid beside her in a single curved motion. There was only one goal carved on the fear-washed board of Daryl’s mind.

“Jesus- _Jesus_ , Beth!” he blurted out, expertly releasing her foot from the trap. He silently thanked the same faceless, nameless deity he and Merle used to drink hot deer blood for that it was a cat trap, not a bear or wolf trap. “Sorry! I’m sorry, I-” Beth began, shakily, stopping short as Daryl’s big, rough hands came up to hold her face.

“Are yuh alrig’t?” he demanded. Beth’s left hand rose of its own accord to touch the back of his right. Her ring—his ring, there on her finger—was cold against his skin.

“I’m okay” she assured him, softly. They sat there in the loam holding the crystal moment between them with trembling fingers and delicately wetted lips. Two sets of blue eyes held one another, all the broken pieces finally making sense. She swallowed, tightening her fingers haltingly as he went to draw away. He took to his heels beside her, leaving one hand on her jaw as his other instinctively found his crossbow.

“Can yuh walk?” he asked, voice hoarse, low as a whisper in a church. She shivered in response to the way his breath was pitched to wreck her. He tilted his head, very slightly and she could have sworn there was a smirk in the shadow of his mouth. Her cheeks heated up as she forced herself to nod and he helped her, palm to wrist, to her feet. All the heat of her previous thoughts departed when she tried to put weight on it. Before she could help it, a hiss of pain escaped her. Daryl noted her limited range of movement, the sound of her gritted teeth as she tested the bruised ankle. She caught his gaze as he squinted at the angle of the sun above them.

“ ‘S’gunna get dark real soon” he muttered. Beth nodded determidly.

“I can make it” she declared. He did smile then, half of one, crooked and real. Beth thought she might have stopped breathing for a few seconds.

“Liar” he told her firmly, lifting his crossbow and handing her the new handgun and two clips. She returned his smile ruefully, silently agreeing and frowning at her foot like it had personally betrayed her. Daryl looked at the sky again and peered suspiciously into the trees.

“Range said there was a graveyard, jus’ tuh the west, got a un’dertakers place in the middle uh it. Reckon, way we’ve come through them woods, it ain’t far. We can hole up there fer the night”

“What about Judith? We’ve gotta get back to her” He waved a hand.

“Naw, Jess’ got ‘er. She’ll be okay till mornin’. We’ll move out firs’ light. Now c’mon, ‘fore we miss the light ourselves”

Without prompting, Daryl lifted her arm around his shoulders and put his own around her tiny waist. His throat went tight having her tucked so close, having her fit so perfectly. He dismissed the thought of course; men and women fit together, that’s what they _did_.

They cleared the brush within a half hour, working up a sweat and grimacing. Beth leaned on him heavily, curved tightly into his side as he guided her into the clear. They took pause on the rise, taking in the expanse of the cemetery and the colonial building opening it’s arms from the middle of it. Daryl went to move towards it, halting when Beth made a high, hurt noise.

“Can we, can we just hold up a sec?” she told him as she worked at her ankle. He watched her doll-like blushing cheeks go grey when she moved the joint the wrong way.

“You alrig’t?” he asked. She looked up at him from under her long lashes, his concern warm where she could feel his imprint with the heat of sweat on her clothes, onto her skin.

“I jus’ needa sit down” she admitted, slightly daunted at the distance between them and safety. Daryl shifted decisively.

“Alright, hold up-” she watched him, puzzled as he set his bow to hang on his front, around his neck. He hurumphed as he settled it and then crouched slightly just in front of her. “-Hop on” he said, as if it wasn’t an outstanding occurrence.

“You serious? Daryl, what about your leg?” she blessed him with concern of her own, overriding all the fraying of boundaries she thought she’d known. In her eighteen years of life, she’d received a thousand piggybacks; from her father, Maggie, Jimmy, her pseudo-family, uncles and cousins. This was different. This was _Daryl_ offering to carry her.

“S’fine. This s’a serious piggyback. Jump up” he ordered. Well-practised, Beth put her hands on her broad shoulders, finding the leather smooth and yielding against her palms, and hopped up, tucked his waist between her thighs and holding on tight. He grunted as he took her weight for the first time, settled her legs comfortably in the cradle of his hold, and set off.

“Yer heavier than yuh look” he informed her.

Beth huffed a laugh, chin against the back of his neck, breathing in the acidic, earthy scent of his hair and the skin covered in dirt and grease and leather. Getting her weight off her ankle was a relief, but being so close to him was a bizarre collision of comfort and adrenaline. They stayed silent as Daryl picked their way through the gravestones, settled into the sacred quiet of hallowed ground. She lifted her head to study the sheen of sweat and filth gleaming above the black leather, wondered what Daryl might do if she kissed him there. He’d probably drop her and stand red-faced and spluttering, like he had blustered the night they’d been drunk on their porch. Beth set her chin on his shoulder and looked forward. His scruffy cheek scraped hers, a sensation unfamiliar when it came with the goosebumps on her arms; bearded cheeks were for uncles and fathers, and Rick who fell somewhere in between.

The words that caught her eye when she turned her face away from the conflicting emotions seemed to stroke her cheek gently. She slid off Daryl’s back without saying a word, just stood and stared. Beside her, Daryl stopped too, followed her gaze and understood without asking, without needing her to say a word. Her face was broken open, but the jagged edges of the emotions were blunted. She was mourning still, in the only way she could.

Hershel had no grave, no crooked wooden cross and overturned earth to mark his final resting place. Behind them, a weed with brilliant yellow blossoms had crept through the cracks in a grave. It was beautiful, in the way Beth had taught him to see. Daryl felt no hesitation leaving the flowers on the headstone, of a man whose name didn’t matter. He stared at the announcement, the short epitaph that encapsulated a whole life. A father. A father like Rick Grimes, bleeding, killing, the warrior bathed in the blood of anyone who would hurt his children. A father like Dale Horvath, the wise man, the scholar who chose his children. A father like Hershel Greene, who was both of these and a healer besides. The protector holding a shotgun and a wise man and one of the toughest sumbitches Daryl knew.

Beth’s slender fingers pressed insistently into his grasp and he automatically made space for them between his own. They still fit, even there, and he reminded himself that men and women were supposed to fit...but he’d never fit like this before.


	12. 'Us' In Trust

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Revelations all around.

_Begin flashback:_

_(Four days ago)_

Beth was helping out in the kitchen, pickling vegetables and salting venison. Winter was coming on them faster than Beth realised, causing dread to march up and down her spine. The last time the cold had whistled on the wind, they’d been reduced to grim animals huddled against the cold. Daryl felt it too, she knew, reaching for her hand some nights when the wind began to hiss through the cracks in their timber hut.

Beth and Liza were up to their elbows in preserves while Jessie got to cutting venison into strips. It felt good, gossiping lightly and swapping stories. As if it wasn’t the end of the world outside their cosy kitchen, while Judith played on the floor and they rolled their sleeves enthusiastically. They talked about high school and prom and old boyfriends. Beth silently wished that she had a funny break-up story to share, instead of the blunt, brutal end to both her previous relationships.

If what she had with Daryl could even be called a relationship.

“My friend Jodie wanted to be prom queen. She was sweet-talking the guys down at the photo shop, so they’d help with her campaign posters. I was so busy thinking about college, but she had her dress all picked out and who she was gunna go with” Liza said, tinged in something like bewilderment. Beth understood. It seemed so strange that things like  _prom_ used to matter to them. 

“I wore my sister Maggie’s dress to my boyfriend’s prom. It was so pretty. Had these gems looked like flowers all round the bodice” she remembered dreamily.

“You didn’t go to your own prom?” asked Jessie, frowning.

“Well, didn’t you have a wedding instead?” Liza pointed out.

Beth froze briefly, forcing her hands to move before her flinch became obvious and nodded.

“Mhm. We got married in the garden. Quiet, yanno? Daryl ain’t one for much dancin’” she said breezily, concentrating on the task at hand. That was her dream wedding after all. She'd have to remember to share that with Daryl...just to keep their story straight of course. There was a clatter as Jessie put down her blade and leaned on the table top, grinning.

“Okay, I gotta ask...” she started cheekily. Liza seemed to recognise the twinkle in her eye.

“Jessie! Don’t you dare!” she protested. Beth looked between them, confused.

“What is a man like that like in bed? Because just saying here, the only eligible bachelors around are fifteen years young than me, thirty years older and my uncle. Me and my lady parts are livin’ vicariously through you!”

Beth’s face bloomed crimson and she clapped her hands over her cheeks with a yelped giggle. Liza told Jessie off, but she ignored her and laughed at Beth instead.

“What about _Sean_?” Beth deflected quickly.

“Gay as a daisy-” Jessie dismissed. “-Then there’s Daryl who’s all gruff and biceps like a damn god’s and turns into a big ole pussy cat around his little girl” she leered, resting on the back of one of the chairs and fanning herself jokingly. Beth giggled and ducked her head back to the berries that needed canned. “I’ll bet he fucks like the Fourth of July goin’ off. All that repressed emotion he’s got going on” Jessie decided after a moment’s contemplation, and cracked up when Beth spilt berry juice all over the table top.

“Oh my God, Jessie! Yuh can’t jus’ spring that sorta thing on me!” Beth exclaimed, pushing her fringe back with the back of her hand, her fingers stained with berry juice.

“Can’t spring wha’ on yuh?”

Beth closed her eyes in horror. Trust Daryl, master of timing, to walk in at _that_ moment with a load of wood for the stove.

“Nothing! Nothing at all, we weren’t-there wasn’t-I wasn’t-hi!” she exclaimed.

He stopped by the work bench and eyed her curiously. Her hair was frayed from work but exertion wasn’t what was putting those burning red flags on her cheeks. Jessie looked fit to bust her seams keeping from laughing. Liza looked horrified.

“Alri’gt” he said and unloaded his burden in the basket. He stopped on his way out and collected Beth’s hand, purple-black juice sliding down the jut of bones towards the sleeve of her shirt. Thoughtlessly he caught it with his mouth before it could stain the material. Beth’s lungs hitched on a gasp that she bit down on. Daryl licked his lips thoughtfully, locking gaze with her as he did so. Heat trembled through her, shuddering through her blood as she stared right back at him. There were wood chips in his hair and sweat on his neck, his eyes darkening as he watched her swallow and run a pink tipped tongue over the seam of her own mouth.

“Needs honey” he suggested and pressed something into her palm before leaving. Beth took a deep breath as the door slammed shut behind him, collecting herself as Liza and Jessie both crowed in unison.

“Like. A. Machine!” Jessie whooped victoriously when Beth finally turned around.

“What’d’he give you?” Liza asked.

Blinking, Beth opened her hand. It was a wooden sheriff’s star carved clumsily with a blade too large for delicacy. Her surprise caught on a sigh and rose to curve into a smile.

“It’s for Judith. Her-” she caught herself on the memory. “-Uhm, Rick. From the prison. He was a sheriff, Before. A good man” she added, sadness colouring her tone.

_End flashback_

“They still not back?” Jessie called up to Maurice on watch.

He slowly shook his head. Jessie swore under her breath and instinctively cradled Judith a little closer.

“Thinkin’ I might take the kangaroo out and have a lil looksee” he commented, gesturing beyond their walls with his rifle.

“I’ll come with” Jessie said and departed to hand Judith over to Tommy.

When she returned, the day had taken on the hazy orange contrast of late afternoon and night’s chill was nipping at their cheeks as Sean, Maurice and Jessie headed out in the truck.

“One hour. Not a second longer. You see anything that doesn’t feel right, you turn your tails, got it?” Ranger warned them as he shut the gate behind them.

From his vantage on the tray of the truck, Sean nodded seriously. Liza, Billy and Ranger’s faces were grim and slashed with the light of the truck’s taillights as he turned to face the front. Daryl and Beth had shared a fair bit of how their old home had fallen to the Walkers, and Ranger’s group had been more cautious ever since. The nightmarish figure of the Governor crept in the back of all their dreams. The couple had drawn closer since Daryl opened up about the Governor, about what he’d done to Beth’s father. There was raw hurt and guilt on his face as Beth held his hand at the kitchen table. Jessie wondered about that as she sat shotgun, casting into the woods as far as she could see for any trace of their friends.

They decided to go as far as the railway crossing to their east and then turn and go as far as the outskirts of the town to the west before returning. Walkers on the side of the road groaned and ambled after them as they approached the railway crossing. Maurice clunked the vehicle into park and opened his door, squinting into the dusky woods.

“What’d’yuh think? You reckon they got caught out by those dead bastards back there?” asked Sean.

“Not a chance. Daryl’ll could deal with that many in his sleep” commented Maurice.

“Don’t think it matters how good the bloke is, if they crept up on ‘em while they were distracted...”

“You think Daryl and Beth would risk their necks for a little nookie?!” exclaimed Jessie, leaning out of her window.

Sean shrugged. “All I know is, for a young couple with a kid, they barely touch. Dunno what I’d do away from the bub with nobody around” he replied, jumping down off the back and setting his shotgun on his shoulder.

“Daryl’s sure real strange about touch. I mean, he melts every time Beth so much as looks at him, but he hesitates to so much as look at her” acquiesced Jessie.

“Guys...what was the name of Beth’s sister and her husband?” interrupted Maurice, standing off to the side, close to a circuit box beside the crossing.

Sean and Jessie exchanged a brief questioning look.

“M-M-M-something? And the bloke was a Gary or a Glenn”

“Maggie and Glenn” remembered Jessie as Sean led the way over.

“Yeah. That’s what I thought” said Maurice grimly and stood aside so they could see the words painted in rotten blood on the metal.

 

**GLENN**

**GO TO TERMINUS**

**MAGGIE SASHA BOB**

 

Unbeknownst to them, Beth was laughing as Daryl carried her over the threshold into the kitchen. They’d dug into the food stash that Ranger had left there in case they ever needed to bug out of the rehab. Set on the kitchen table was what Daryl had earlier christened a ‘redneck feast’ and she might have melted a little as he set her down carefully.

“I keep telling Jessie that you’re a romantic at heart!”

He grunted, sliding into his own chair and reaching for the pig’s feet. Beth chewed on a mouthful and watched him curiously. Feeling her gaze, he jerked his chin at her questioningly.

“Yuh trustin’ Jessie to look after our Lil Asskicker”

“Yeah, so?” he grunted, busying himself unscrewing the lid of a cola.

“Yuh told me once all the good people died” she said meaningfully. “But here yuh are, trustin’ ‘em”

“Yuh think tha’s a mistake?” he asked, putting down his drink and looking at her calculatingly.

“No. I think it’s high time we trusted people. Like Rick trusted people”

He looked away and sniffed, fiddling with a jar on the tabletop to do something with his hands. The hurt was still there, the pain of losing their people, tight across his shoulders. Beth leaned across and took his fingers between her palms.

“So what changed yer mind?”

Daryl blinked slowly and looked up at her across the corner of the small kitchen table. Her hair burned deep cold in the torchlight, eyes shining and her lips curving sweetly as she looked at him, all trust and openness. He swallowed. “

Yuh know” he told her simply.

Because she should have. Nobody else in the world was allowed to hold all the broken pieces of him together, was allowed access to the softness behind his defences. Except she was shaking her head and smiling.

“No, I don’t. Tha’s why I’m asking yuh, silly” she teased, but there was a serious edge to her tone.

He dropped his gaze away quickly, his heart beating fast and focused on her hands curved around his. That changed the situation immensely; Beth not understanding the effect she had on him, on the way he thought. It was huge, too large for him to comprehend properly with her guileless eyes on his, searchingly.

“Mhrmm” he muttered, shaking his shoulders in a shrug.

“Don’t _mhrmm_. What changed your mind?” Beth was looking him right in the face, digging for the reason he’d decided to trust these new people, when Daryl met her gaze and let the walls drop away. She looked into him and saw everything. Saw the gentleness of his hard, calloused fingers, and the balance that had settled inside him, that he reached for her at all, that he’d wept right in front of her and hadn’t fled her comforting embrace, that he’d needed her like a limb for a long time now. She’d morphed from a small part of the much larger whole that had smoothed his barbs to the reason he kept himself that little less wild, less angry, less swollen thunderheads and crackling storm and more lightning; focused, intent, fierce.

“Oh” Beth breathed.


	13. Be Good

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Trapped alone in the undertaker's house, Beth and Daryl open up to one another.

He looked away first, breaking away from the intensity of their locked gazes, slid his his hand away from hers. She stared at him with her heart pounding, her hands feeling empty without his, her fingers wrong without his between them. It happened so fast that her head spun sickeningly. The abrupt dizzy spell was the only reason she let him retreat. She couldn’t form the words because until that moment this had all been pretend. Daryl had been a celebrity poster tacked to her wall until the second he crumbled and became human between her arms.

“You...you never said”

“Nuthin’ tuh say” he muttered.

There was. There was too much to say, too much to try and express with mere words. Beth’s heart sung with it. She didn’t know where to start.

“D'ya remember that night we spent in the trunk of that car?” she asked instead.

“Yeah” Daryl grunted.

“I fell a little bit in love with you, right then”

He startled and stared at her.

Her expression was forthright and she smiled shyly at his eyes all wide like a fawn. “I wasn't lyin' when I said what I did 'bout the firs' time I saw yuh wi' Judith”

He blinked, cleared his throat and nodded sternly. “Uh- 'm sure yuh meant it” he croaked out.

Just because she meant it didn’t mean she meant it like they’d made it out to be. He’d been _sure_ he’d be by Rick’s side till he died, maybe even watch Carl grow up and take over from his old man. Yet it hadn’t worked out that way. He expected that was how Beth had meant it when she’d declared forever in that hesitant, honest way. She frowned at him, seeing into his thoughts by the creases around his mouth. How could she know him so well and have missed this?

“I _did_. I was so damn scared, but all I had to do was look at you and I knew we'd be alright, me'n'Judith. I knew you wouldn't let anything happen to us. That we'd be okay as long as we had you. S'long as _I_   had you”

He stood up in a hurry, pushing his chair back, putting some distance between them. “Wha'd'yuh know 'bout love any-damn-way! Zack and Jimmy, d'ya love them?” he lashed out, all squinted eyes and arched back.

Beth watched him and bit down on a sad smile. It was a little amusing to think he used to cow her when he got like this. Now, all she saw was all his soft bits being hurriedly enshrouded in barbed wire.

“Yeah. I loved ‘em. In my own way. Loved Jimmy...like spring. All new and pretty. Loved Zack like fire, loved knowing I was alive when I was with him-” he started to pace because she was being too _calm_. It wasn't fair that she was sitting still while he was a wreck. “-It's different to how I love you...you 'n'me were sorta forged in the trenches, you know? I mean I didn't fall for you when it was all safe behind fences with flowers and things. Fell for you up to my elbows in Walker guts and starving and still think you're the most beautiful man I ever seen when you're mad with fever and stinkin' to high heaven”

He stopped with his back to her, arms folded tight with his hands jammed into the corners of his vest, head bent down. He was strangely, harshly attractive, all angles, hard at every facet.

“This...we...it ain’t right” he breathed out, her sincerity stripping his defensive rage like a rabbit’s coat. Beth’s voice didn’t rise, showed no fury. She pushed her chair back and stood behind him, watching him in the reflection on the darkened windows.

“Why, coz I’m jus’ a lil girl? Screw you, Daryl. That’s bullshit and we both know it. Yuh gunna tell what the problem is really?” she asked shakily. His rejection hurt.

“Yuh ain’t a lil girl. Yuh ain’t been in a long time” he admitted, half-turning and flinching at how close she was standing to him. He kicked back on the bench and crossed his ankles.

“We sleep together every night. You let me hold your hand. You made me a _ring._ You make me feel safe. What is it that I make you feel?” she asked, lightly, the sort of tone one used to catch out a small child in a lie.

Daryl seemed to recognise it and snorted, unamused, but his brow furrowed at he thought about it. Beth had laid it all out for him, with her talk of falling in love in the trenches, in the boot of a car in a rainstorm. He wasn’t clever with words like that, but for Beth? He’d _try_.

“Yuh make everythin’...messy. Ain’t easy, like it used to be. Yer like them weeds out in the grave. Yer sumthin’ pretty in all these dead shit-” he kicked at the tiles on the floor, refusing to meet her gaze. She was holding her breath. “-Yuh...yuh make me try tuh be better. Like Carol, makin’ me shake Patrick’s hand fer bringing back a damn deer. But...them flowers don’t care ‘bout some mangy dawg bringin’ down deer. We...if we weren’t all fucked up coz of wha’ happened, if we didn’t have Judith holdin’ us together...”

“What? We wouldna stayed together? Yuh reckon you’d’a left me to die, is that what you think?” she was hurt the way Daryl had been hurt when she’d accused him of not caring about the people they’d lost. She couldn’t believe he had such a low opinion of himself, but he misunderstood, drawing back believing she thought he cared so little that he would have left her.

“That ain’t what I meant!”

“It is! Yuh never woulda left me, I know that. Hell, Daryl, sometimes I think I know yuh better’n yuh know yourself!”

“Oh, yeah? Yuh think that d’yah?”

She folded her arms bad-temperedly. “Why is it yuh seem to think that bein’ thought a good man is such a damn insult?! Good enough for me...oh my Lord! That’s what your issue is, isn’t it? You don’t think you’re good ‘nough for me!”

Spooked, Daryl straightened and shook himself. “We should get some sleep. I’ll keep watch” he decided, stalking away from her, grabbing his crossbow and not stopping.

She heard the back door open then shut firmly and clenched her fists hard enough her nails bit her skin. Stopping him would have done too much damage to recover from, but she wanted to. She wanted to shake some sense into him. Instead she cleaned up the kitchen and wandered down the hallway. Near the front door, off the foyer, she found a room set out for a funeral, a piano in the corner, sadly gathering dust. Stepping inside, she lit candles and sat running her fingers over the keys as she worked up the courage to awaken the music hibernating in the ivory and ebony.

Why she chose that old song about shot-gunning beers she didn’t know, but she liked the way the sad-hopeful-warm-hazy notes hung in the air, matched the undisturbed dust and soft yellow glow of the candles. The sound of Daryl clearing his throat made her drop a note and turn in a hurry. He was leaning in the doorway with his bow on his shoulder, like he’d been there for a while. He moved inside with false confidence, on soft feet, putting his bow down as he spoke.

“Place is nailed up tight...only way in’s through the front door” he said, the words not designed to communicate vital information but simply to break the silence. It sounded odd, coming from Daryl, who was more comfortable in silence.

Beth didn’t reply. She just watched, clenching her fingers on the edge of the piano seat, wondering what would happen next. He huffed as he bounced easily off the balls of his feet and settled on the silk lining of the open coffin.

“What’r’yuh doin’?”

“This is the comfiest bed I’ve had in years” he told her, like it wasn’t messing with about a thousand taboos to sleep in a coffin.

“Really?” she asked, disbelievingly, forgetting again how different they had both been Before.

“I ain’t kiddin’” he informed her, sinking in with a sigh. Finding her eyes still on him, his thumbnail slipped between his teeth and jerked his chin minutely. “Why don’ yuh go ahead n’ play some more?-” he dropped his hand away and met her blue eyes seriously. “-Keep singin’”

He meant more than that, the way he said that. He meant _stay_ , and _give me time_ , and mostly _tell me I didn't push you away_.

“I thought my singin’ annoyed you”

“Ain’t no jukeboxes anymore, so..” he grunted disinterestedly, turning his eyes to the ceiling with forced aloofness. Half of her thought she should probably call him out on it, but instead she turned back to the piano and found the keys again, felt his gaze burning her. She forced herself to keep playing, ignoring him as she listened to the music, swimming in the mellow notes. He was pushing himself out of the coffin when she stopped playing, feeling a smile she didn’t mean to wear curving across her face and lifting all the weight off her. Daryl stopped dead when she turned around, like she’d caught him with the sights of a rifle. His lips were a white line, hands trembling by his sides. Beth tilted her head at him and stood, stepping towards him with the same heel-toe movements he’d shown her while they were stalking squirrels.

“Yuh gunna kiss me?”

“Thinkin’ ‘bout it” he admitted uneasy, shifting his feet.

“Good. About damn time. Married what, two months, and I haven’t even got a kiss? That’s bad work Dary-oof”

She huffed her surprise into his mouth as he settled his hands on her shoulders and kissed her, quick and honest. Her fingers gripped the front of his vest and she melted soft against him, his quivering form going still and then oozing closer to her, arms sliding around her, holding her close as the kiss turned slick and hard. Beth dragged her fingers up the back of his neck, wanted to shout for joy at the shudder that went through him, the way he tugged her back and sat down without releasing her mouth. Their teeth clacked at the drop and Beth giggled, straddled him comfortably even as she swallowed his blurted apology. At some point, the kiss turned slow, mellowed like the start of her song, slipping into tiny droplets, the first fat raindrops at the start of a storm.

“Reckon that was worth waitin’ for” she whispered.

Daryl smiled with one side of his mouth, blinking and leaning back so he could see her expression properly. “Yeah? You alright?”

She hummed contentedly and began to trace the edges of his cheekbones. His hands rested on her waist. He let her touch. It felt precious, fragile, how open he was in this fleeting moment. Beth caught her breath.

“What changed your mind?” she couldn’t bring herself to speak above this pious murmur. It was sacred, the way Daryl swallowed and licked his lips, steeling himself to unwind the barbed wire from himself. She rested on her haunches, resting on his lean thighs and brushed her hands over his unwashed, tangled hair.

“I-uh...I ain’t really no good wi’ words, darlin’ ”

The endearment hit like her first shot of moonshine.

“That’s okay. I’m still listening” she assured him, but his hand still had a tremor like he was about to touch something priceless as he reached up and ran a finger, feather light, over the braid in her ponytail. Something about it seemed to give him strength.

“After Merle...I jus’...I give myself this kinda permission to....to be happy. Make it work. Follaw Rick. Only guy who ever treat’d me like I’s more’n’some dumb redneck-” he shrugged and squinted past her as he found more words. “-I figure...after wha’ happened...we might not see ‘em, any of ‘em. Rick wouldna settled somewhere wi’out knowin’ wha’ happened to Lil Asskicker. Yer sister, Glenn and them, they was on the bus, ‘fore I blew that tank. They could be anywhere. Coulda headed north, like we was gunna. So I got thinkin’...if they’re out there, alive, somewhere, I owe Rick to look after Judith, and I owe Hershel to look after you...but...I owe it to me...to be happy”

Beth could have burst with pride. She grinned before he could take to his heels at the tears in her eyes and kissed him with the insistence of a spring breeze stealing through an open window.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Favourite chapter alert!!! I tried so hard to have the Walkers burst in and Beth get nabbed, maybe by the Claimers so I could merge the story lines, but I ran screaming from it after about five sentences down that track. You want angst and tears, go rewatch the show! This is a happy place with rainbows and unicorns. 
> 
> As a side note, I have listened to Emily Kinney's cover of 'Be Good' so many times that my siblings can now sing it off by heart in the car. Hope you guys enjoy! I'm looking at around 3-4 chapters left, but just warning you guys that I will be heading into what the media loves to dub 'The Outback' for work. In any case, it can't get more remote so updates are gunna get worse. I'm so sorry!!! I'll do my best to get them written and uploaded before I head out.


	14. Blood

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Beth and Daryl's fragile new relationship is tested as word comes to them that Glenn and Maggie have survived the fall of the prison.

Early morning cracking into the day proper saw Sean and Tommy sitting on the watch platform. Tommy yawned, flicking the brim of his black cowboy hat off his brow, squinting off in the distance, towards the tree line where Daryl and Beth had gone yesterday to hunt. There was movement, weaving through the line of cover. He raised the sights of the rifle and peered at the figures, trying to make sense of what he was seeing.

“Hey, Sean, I...there’s people...I think it’s Beth! But...they’re...might be Daryl’s leg” he handed the gun over.

The Australian took in the human figures staggering towards them now and clenched his jaw.

“Dun’t look good. Go git Ranger” he ordered, following the boy down to man the gate. Looking worse for wear and out of breath, leaning on one another, Daryl and Beth approached the gates as Sean offered them a hesitant wave, eyeing them. Behind him, Ranger had come running with Liza, Billy and Maurice on his heels.

“Whoa, man, stop there. You two alright?” Sean barked, keeping the rifle to his shoulder.

“We’re fine! It’s all good. Not bit or nuthin’ jus’ rattled a bit” Daryl said, pulling up his sleeves and shirt to show his bloodless form. Beth did the same, dropping a bloody sack at her feet to do so.

“Man, you scared the _fark_ outta us! Giz us a hand with this, Billy” declared Sean, satisfied enough now to move forward to the gates.

Daryl didn’t let go of Beth as they limped inside, with her twisted ankle and Daryl’s old scars aggravated from running. Sean shook Daryl’s hand, eyeing him worriedly, hugged Beth and demanded to know what happened. They were both swept up in relieved hugs and handshakes and cheek kisses. It was a warm, close, cloying feeling that felt too much and just enough at the same time. It felt like home, and yet all wrong in the same instance.

“Thank God you’re alright! You had us so worried” Liza wept, hugging Beth.

“We went out lookin’ for ya’ll but we couldn’t find yuh nowhere!” Maurice told them eagerly.

“Okay, easy, give ‘em some room! You both alright?” Ranger ordered. He gave Daryl’s shoulder a quick squeeze that spoke volumes. “Your kid is sleeping in your cabin. She’s been fussy as hell, waiting for you to get back”

Beth and Daryl visibly relaxed, shooting one another a shy, delicate look of relief and comfort.

“Beth twisted her ankle, we couldn’t make it back last night. Holed up at yer place out at the cemetery. Had a run in wi’ Walkers on the way back” Daryl took advantage of the lull in the talking to explain.

“We ate some of your food. We’ll replace it though, and we got some pheasants” added Beth, proudly hefting the bag of birds.

“Beth bagged ‘er firs’ Walker with the bow” grinned Daryl then.

There were some congratulations voiced as Maurice took the bloody bag gleefully.

“D’ya need that ankle looked at?” asked Liza.

“No, it’s fine. I’ll come by later” Beth said, eager to see Judith.

Daryl began to guide her in the right direction when Ranger stopped him gently.

“Maybe after you cleaned up, you both come see me ‘n’ Jessie. Got somethin’ we should talk about, pretty promptly”

Daryl frowned and nodded haltingly. Beth was already tugging him towards the relative homeliness of their cabin. Jessie greeted them at the front door, looking strangely nervous. Tommy was there too, tipped his hat with a shy smile and accepted Beth’s quick hug of greeting.

“Your girl’s finally gone down. Think she was wonderin’ where her mama and pops were, wouldn’t sleep. You two alright?” asked Jessie, looking at her fingers.

“Thanks for this, Jessie” said Beth emphatically. “We jus’ got caught out. Beth twisted her ankle” explained Daryl.

After being reassured that Beth would get her ankle checked out once they’d cleaned up and seen Judith, Jessie left with a funny expression and a forced wave, dragging Tommy with her.

“That all seem off to yuh?” asked Daryl, squinting as the door shut. Beth was already at the bedroom slide, pushing it open, peeking inside. He didn’t even have to see her face to know exactly how it lit up when she saw the tiny girl doing a passable starfish impersonation in the middle of their bed, her little fingers twitching as she dreamed. He let his bow settle on the table and stood close behind her to see. Beth gave a little sigh and leaned back into him. He was unyielding against her, unsure, but as she stood close wordlessly, offering the embrace but asking nothing of him, he gingerly melded to her.

“We’re gunna be okay, you know” she told him, softly, her eyes on the sleeping child.

He was about to nod when there was a knock on their front door. Daryl began to wind up like a Jack-In-The-Box, ready to explode into action. Beside him, he could feel Beth tensing too, turning and shutting the bedroom door, eyes darting to his crossbow on the table.

“We’ll see ‘bout ‘okay’ I guess” Daryl said. Something darkened in Beth’s pretty face and she reached into her boot and retrieved the gun she’d taken from the Walker in the woods. She checked the chamber, placed the gun in her waistband and returned her hands to her side, nodding for him to get the door. Ranger and Jessie stood on the other side.

“We needa talk. Can we come in?” announced Ranger grimly.

“So yuh said. Everythin’ alright?” Daryl replied. He was standing firmly in the doorway, blocking Jessie and Ranger. They glanced at each other. Beth stood behind Daryl, heart beating fast.

“When we were out lookin’ for yuh, we went down to the crossin’. There’s a Terminus map there. Somebody writ a message on the circuit breaker box. Said Glenn, Go to Terminus, from Maggie, Sasha and Bob” said Jessie in a rush.

There was a few seconds of silence as they both digested that. Then Beth made a wounded sound, twisting away. Daryl whirled too, reaching for her as she sat down on the couch hard, clapping a hand over her mouth so her shuddering gasps wouldn’t wake Judith. Daryl dropped his hand and he fell beside her, thigh to thigh. Being as close to her as possible would make the words rattling around in his head in Jessie’s nervous voice make sense, he was sure of it. Beth wrapped her arms around his neck and buried her face in his shoulder. She was making confused whimpering sounds, but not quite crying. Daryl didn’t know what to say to comfort her. He just stared blankly ahead.

“How long yuh reckon it’s been there for?” he asked croakily.

“Had that rain, what? Bit over a week ago? Wasn’t washed out by that. Musta been pretty recent” replied Jessie uneasily.

Beth choked.

Daryl tensed. He’d been going to go, in case their family was there, in case her family was there. He hadn’t. He’d stopped looking, like he’d stopped looking for the Governor, like he’d stopped looking for Sophia.

“There’s no way of tellin’ if it’s your sister-” Ranger began.

“It’s her. She got off the bus to go after Glenn. I was there. They must’ve...oh God, they got separated. She thought I was on the bus” whispered Beth. Shakily, Daryl held her tighter until she curled herself into his chest to be comfortable. He didn’t know how he was supposed to hold her, but he needed her close.

“Wouldna been anyone else, not here. Sasha an’ Bob, they’re ours too. Shit...” said Daryl, standing up and clenching his fists.

“Whatever you both need, we’ll help. Family is-” Jessie was cut off by Judith’s whine from next door.

Everyone looked towards the door, Beth with her fingers tightly laced, pressed to her lips.

“Rick-” she blurted out and met Daryl’s searching, furrowed gaze. “-a-and Carl a-and-”

“We don’ know nuthin’” he cut her off sharply, fingers on his bow to calm himself. His shoulders were hunched up, anger turning inwards and guilt burning in his gut.

“We’ll leave you to it, but…as Jessie said, Daryl. Whatever you need”

Beth got to her feet and headed for Judith as he nodded curtly. The door shut quietly behind Jessie and Ranger. Daryl stared at his hands and cursed.

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Lazy. Dumb. Redneck. Moron. _Stupid_.

The well-known mantra echoed in his head, so loud he didn’t hear Beth re-enter the room.

“We have to go” she said, the sentence catching at the end as if she wanted to say more but she didn’t know how. Judith sat on her hip and grinned when she saw Daryl.

“Da!” she gurgled, the gleam of teeth beginning to peek through her gums.

Daryl had to sit down as his knees went weak.

“Christ” he croaked and buried his face in his hands for a moment.

**

The two men stood and watched the rest of the group enjoying the morning sunlight. Beth and Tommy sat on a blanket playing with Judith while Jessie and Sean tossed a baseball between them. Maurice was perched on the bumper of his truck, watching with a smile.

“Yer going after them, obviously” Ranger pointed out. Daryl nodded.

“Yup. But we ain’t riskin’ takin’ Judith out there again. Was thinkin’ I’d go check out this place, find Maggie an’ Glenn...hopin’ if they made it, the rest of our people might be there too”

“I can understand the sentiment-” Ranger agreed and then scooped his hat off his head to run a hand over his greying thatch of thick hair. “-Who are you hoping to find, other than Beth’s family? This Rick and Carl that Beth was talking about?”

Daryl shrugged and watched Judith bashing her toys together. Her hair was chestnut, bright in the sun, with a brassy tinge that Lori’s used to get in the sun when it was clean, and her eyes were the same piercing colour as Rick and Carl. She was a serious baby most of the time, but when she laughed it was loud and brilliant. He loved her fiercely, the way he had since the first time he’d held her in his arms, in a way he’d never allowed himself to dwell on too much. She wasn’t his kid, he’d kept reminding himself even when he took risks to get her the things she needed. He nearly got himself bitten once nabbing diaper cream. Yet, they’d been separated from the group going into their second month now and it had long since become impossible to push away his paternal feelings for the infant. She was his daughter now, as much as she was Rick’s, and the visceral response terrified him. It’d be easier to draw away if Rick were around, easier to tell himself that Judith deserved a better father, that she had a better father, if he and Beth were no longer all she had in the world.

“Rick. Guy that lead our old group-” Daryl replied promptly. “-Sasha an’ Bob, ‘pparently. Rick’s boy Carl, an’ this lady Michonne. Anyone survived, it’d be them. Michonne’s hard. She’d be okay. Other’n’that, I dunno”

Ranger hummed. “Terminus is about a week’s walkin’ from here. Could drive it in two or three days. Whether you stay in Terminus or return here, that’s up to you. But with the truck in workin’ order now-”

“Wait, now hold on. What’r’yuh sayin’?” demanded Daryl, pulling Ranger up short.

He studied him before shaking his head and settling his Stetson on his head.

“My friend, you are cagier than a twice-whipped mongrel, yuh know that? Now the only reason we never headed that way ourselves is coz we got comfortable here. Ain’t like we couldn’t’ve scrounged up the supplies to do it. Now, small group; I’m thinking me, you, Sean, we pull off that trip real easy, travel light, travel fast, yuh hear what I’m sayin’? You ain’t gotta go this alone”

“I can’t ask yuh to do that” said Daryl firmly.

“You ain’t askin’ and neither am I. Alright?”

“Yes’sir”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh jeezzzzz, guys, I am soooo sorry about how long this took to get up and it's not even that good! I swear when I have time again this is all getting edited. Thanks for keeping with me anyways!


	15. Terminus

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, I could write a summary or I could simply tell you shits about to get real as fuck.

In the moonlight coming through their window, she didn’t look entirely human.

She seemed too silver and hazy, as if she wasn’t quite within reach.

Except she was, she was right in front of him, placing her hands on his thighs as she knelt between his knees. She may as well have been naked, for the bare skin that showed at her throat and thighs, uncovered by the buttoned shirt he’d worn a few times before she claimed it as a nightshirt.

He’d never had a woman wear his shirt before. The possessive thrill it gave him nearly choked him.

Daryl lifted his bow off his lap to accommodate Beth.

“Yer gunna come back, okay?” she whispered.

He inhaled through his nose and nodded shortly. Beth rose up onto her toes and put her hands on his face.

“I mean it. No hero stuff”

He snorted and raised an eyebrow as if to say _what, me?_   Beth pressed her lips together prissily to reply _yes, exactly you,_ and leaned in to kiss him. His heart hurt as he let her do it—it wasn’t for himself, his inner voice said firmly. It was for her. It was a goodbye kiss—and didn’t respond. After a moment, Beth pulled back, confused. He looked away, before he lost himself in twin pools of ocean curled in the snowy valleys of her shadowy face. 

“There…ain’t no need fer this anymore, Beth. There’s no point. An’ I don’ need yer sister thinkin’ any worse of me than she already does”

“What? I don’…Daryl, what are you sayin’?”

He shrugged. “I’ll find 'em tomorrow an’ tell Ranger this here was all faked. He’ll unnerstand. Knows we had Lil Asskicker to look out for”

The tide was rising in her oceans when he chanced a quick look at her.

“Fake? You put a ring on my finger, we…”

He stood up and hardened his heart. Taken by surprise, Beth tumbled onto her backside and stared up at him for a split second before she instictively pushed her feet under her and stood too. 

“Aw, don’ yuh cry on me, girl. It didn’t mean nuthin’. None of it did” he snapped.

She slapped him, thankfully. He watched, expressionless as she tugged the wire ring off her finger and shoved it into the pocket of his vest.

“Better take yuh _fake_ ring back then” she shot at him, fiercely, and whirled back into the other room.

. **

Sean, Daryl, Ranger and Maurice stood in the cover of the tree-line that pierced a rise over Terminus. The truck was parked back on the road, not hidden. They weren’t expecting trouble of any kind, but Daryl forced them to be cautious, taking them along the back fence to check things out before they walked in.

“Sayin’ this as a fellah who regularly deals with the _undead_ …this is the creepiest farkin’ thing I’ve ever seen” commented Sean, who was obviously forcing himself to remain composed. There was no activity anywhere that they could see; no Walkers, no perimeter guards, no vehicles. There was nothing. It was, as Sean said, fucking creepy.

Daryl grunted and led them onwards. He picked them the best path, where they had cover and good vantage. He didn’t know it, but he walked the same trail that Rick Grimes had lead Michonne and Carl down, just over a week before. They stopped, eyeing the sagging back fence.

“This here’s what I think: one or two of us go in there, check it out, and if it’s safe, come back out to get the rest of us” announced Ranger.

Sean fiddled with the shotgun, licking his lips. “I don’ like the look’ah any of this, mate. Might jus’ be the heebie-jeebies talkin’ but…” he trailed off.

“Oh, I agree. Well. It’s your party, Daryl, what do you think?” Ranger asked, looking for the other man.

He was standing a ways from them, kicking at disturbed earth and frowning.

“ ‘S sumthin’ buried ‘ere” he grunted in explanation, kneeling.

“Betcha it’s a farkin’ body” sighed Sean. Maurice shot him a confused look, to which the Australian shrugged, dropping the gun onto his shoulder. “Dunno. Just seems to be the way this day is headin’”

Daryl found the canvas bag and pulled it out of it’s grave, shaking dirt out of the zipper and tearing it open. The Python gleamed in the sunlight and he rocked back on his heels, pressing his hand to his mouth and dragging it down over his tense jaw. He thought of Michonne and Carl and shuddered. 

“ ‘s Rick’s gun. Aw, shit. Sumthin’s wrong. Ain’t no way good ol’ boy Rick Grimes leaves his piece out ‘ere to rot, not if it were safe in there an’ he had the choice of coming back out here” he gestured furiously at the fence.

“Faaarrk” replied Sean.

Daryl slammed a bolt into his bow, grabbed the Python and pushed it into the back of his jeans. “I’m goin’ down there. Y’all wait here. I ain’t back in twenty minutes…”

“Come and git ya” finished Sean firmly. Daryl shook his head, then locked gazes with Ranger.

“Yuh get the hell outta here. Yuh look aft’r Beth and Lil Asskicker”

Ranger didn’t look away from Daryl. He had one of the guns from the bag in his hands, his hunting knife sheathed on his thigh and his cudgel by his feet, his Stetson casting the top of his features in dark shadows.

“Twenty minutes. You not back, we come down and drag your ass back to your wife”

Daryl flinched, his left hand twitched towards the breast pocket on the inside of his vest. Resting snugly inside the safety of the folds of leather was Beth’s ring.

“Lis'en, Ranger, there's sumthin' I gotta come clean about, 'fore we go in there...” he began, holding his chin high. Ranger studied the rifles, glanced up at him casually.

“This about you'n'Beth not really bein' hitched?”

The look on his face must have been something, because Sean had to slap a hand over his mouth to muffle his laughter. Daryl was too flummoxed to scowl at him for it. Ranger shrugged in response to his slack-jawed stare.

“Beth never seemed the sorta girl to be gettin' herself hitched right outta high school--madly in love be damned-- and the two of you are all kinds of too smart to get her knocked up in a damned apocalypse. No way, no how. Wasn't truly convinced of it myself, at first, till I saw how Beth treated that ring of yours...”

“Wha'd'yuh mean?” asked Daryl dumbly. Ranger smiled tight and sad.

“Was a newlywed once myself. Thing I remember about the days after we got engaged was-” his voice cracked and he cleared his throat. Daryl adhered to the Man Code rigidly, looking away as Ranger collected himself. “-It was the way she couldn't stop touching that ring. Fiddled with it and grinning down at it like she wanted to make sure it was real and then was so damned happy when it was...you'n'Beth, yuh can tell me it ain't like you told it, but don't tell me it ain't real. Not with the way you look at her” he finished, gruffly.

The rangy hunter didn’t know what to do with that. He shook himself, clenched his jaw and started heading down towards the fence instead of replying. With the sort of ease that made his audience on the rise wonder what Daryl Greene-Dixon had actually done with his life Before, he bounced over the chain-link fence and ran for the cover of the buildings, disappearing inside.

Cold sweat slunk down his spine as he continued inside and encountered no-one.

When he found people, making more Terminus maps in one of the hangers, the conversation was easy-going, polite, not nearly cautious as he would have expected but not overly trusting. The people—well fed, fit, no signs of injuries or malnutrition or fear—checked him for weapons but let him keep the bow, asked his name and one of them, the man who’d spoken first, cursing out whoever was supposed to be on guard, smiled and said;

“Welcome to Terminus”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's a lazier cliffhanger than the real one, I'm so sorry!


	16. Survive

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The ring in Daryl's pocket gains weight as he declares war against the Termites.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this is so short guys, I'm uploading whatever I manage to spit out between fighting fires. Note to self, find a new career. Kind of a homophobic language warning for this chapter, but not really. I'm going to flag it (the word 'homo' not used hatefully) just in case.

“So how long’s this place been ‘ere?” asked Daryl, squinting as he stepped into the sun, immediately on the heels of young Alex, directed by Gareth to show Daryl ‘the welcome wagon’ at the front.

“Since almost the start. When the camps got overrun, people started finding this place. Think it was instinct, ya know? Follah the path. Some folks were headin’ to the coast, others out west or up north, but they all wound up here”

They’d stopped in a bright courtyard filled with colour, idle chatter and delicious smells. The woman they’d paused in front of, tending to the grill, smiled and nodded.

“Hi. Heard ya came in the back door. Smart…you’ll fit right in here” she added, eyes on the meat sizzling before her.

Daryl’s mouth watered and he swallowed, keeping his bow carefully at the ground as he cast around, shifting his weight on the balls of his feet. The back of his neck was prickling and bones felt too tight under his skin, the same animalistic instinct that Alex declared had led people to Terminus telling the hunter to run.

“Will you fix this man a plate for me, Mary?” asked Alex then, gesturing to the grill with a smile he tried to share with Daryl. The newcomer to Terminus seemed nervous, flighty, like they always were, but desperate enough to want the illusion to be real. He eyed the food with the same bloodshot eyes, a shiner making his half-suspicious squint worse.

“I ah…only come in by myself to…make sure it were safe. I got…” he made a vague gesture the way he’d come.

Mary’s eyes widened: her features reminded Daryl of the old wildcat mama he’d seen once. All soft comfortableness that came directly from her confidence in her claws. She made him just as nervous as the man who'd greeted him, Gareth. 

“You got people on the outside waitin’ for you?” she guessed sympathetically. He nodded jerkily, eyeing the others moving in the background. His hands shook on his bow as he clenched his fingers in an effort to hide the unconscious movement.

That was prison riot gear.

That was _his_ goddamn poncho.

He knew that pack.

And he knew Hershel’s pocket-watch, knew the way Glenn held it in his fingers like water.

His thoughts turned to Beth, of moonshine nights and her trembling middle finger raised, cooing at Beth and cursing at Walkers. He thought of the ring he’d made her, still sitting in his pocket, and thought of the way Ranger had known.

“Wife. Baby girl” he croaked out.

“Well, God, why are you standing here? Please. Let’s go get your family” Gareth, seemed to appear out of nowhere, slick like an oil spill with that salesman’s smile firmly in place.

The warmth of Rick’s Python in the small of Daryl’s back settled the immediate drive Daryl had to punch the man squarely in the jaw.

“Sounds good” he said instead.

Gareth’s smile widened and he arched an arm out to indicate that Daryl should go first. He walked with his back to Mary, saw the bullet holes punched out of the concrete at his feet and said nothing, did nothing. He continued to do nothing as he, Alex and Gareth crossed the place where the tracks met. They went through the fence, past a pair of sentries at the gates and swung sharply towards the woods, continuing along the fence. It took about four minutes longer than it should have for Daryl to realise he’d been sloppy.

He’d wanted it to be real too badly.

There was nothing more he wanted in the world than to walk in, find their people alive and safe and well, to go back to Beth.

And beg her forgiveness, he realised with a sinking heart. The ring seemed to gain more weight as he casually, he slung his bow on his shoulder without breaking stride, rolling a bolt with a broken fletching between his fingers.

“You got eyes in here huh?” asked Daryl, breaking the thick silence.

“Yup. Saw you come over the fence…you…and your friends” said Gareth.

Daryl stopped, top lip twitching in a snarl.

“And, unless of course the cowboy is hiding your _wife_ and _baby_ under his _hat_ …I don’t think you’re being entirely honest with us, Daryl” he continued, heatedly.

The archer turned his head to the side just enough to see Gareth and Alex from the corner of his eye, most of his attention on the line of people rising out of the foliage, armed to the teeth with automatic weapons, the tools cradled with confidence, not clutched like the guns of the Woodbury ‘army’.

“Yeah…how ‘bout Alex there tells me where he got that pocket-watch, huh?”

Gareth snapped his gaze sideways to Alex, who spluttered in shock and stared at the chain in the pocket of his jeans. The oil-slick monster stabbed his minion with a venomous glare that silenced him before turning the poison on his prey, rolling his eyes heavenward as he exclaimed:

“Don’t you sons of bitches know how to _die_?!” he cried out in frustration, reaching for the radio at his hip.

“Not so far” grunted Daryl, and swung, driving the bolt in his fingers into the soft spot right under Gareth’s sternum. Bullets replied, drowning out the gurgle of blood filling his lungs, nipping at Daryl’s ankles as he drove the muzzle of the Python under Alex’s chin and ordered him with bloodshot eyes to _fucking move_! The two of them went to ground behind a log. Alex tried to scramble away, but Daryl leaped on top of him and held him down with a sinewy arm across the young man’s throat.

“Good damn time for some firepower, Sean!” he roared to the sky.

Bullets continued to pound the rotting timber and cold earth around where Daryl and Alex lay. The hunter chanced three answering shots when the dirt shaken by oncoming footsteps got too close. Before he could come up with a better plan, however, the dirt shook for real, lifted by a massive explosion. The radios blared and screamed and Sean lit another stick of dynamite as Maurice skidded to a halt beside Daryl, snatching their hostage out from under him and dragging them both to their feet. Lead shots pinged on the metal as Ranger screamed over the hill in the truck, crushing saplings and levelling young trees. Maurice piled into the front with Alex as Daryl and Sean leaped onto the tray and hunkered down.

“How…the fark…did you know I’d-” Sean panted.

“You got two things written ‘cross yer damn head, man: homo and likes to blow shit up” Daryl shouted. Sean rolled from his stomach onto his side with a thoughtful expression entirely innappropirate for a person being shot at with automatic weapons.

“That sums me up pretty well, actually” he admitted, following Daryl into a sitting position as they roared quickly out of range of the guns. Daryl’s nose twitched and he banged his fist on the window to tell Ranger to slow down, gesturing off to the side of the road when the man looked into the rear-view. He rolled down the window and stuck his head out to talk to him as he tore a new track in the soft earth.

“That didn’t feel much like arrivin’ and survivin’ to me, bud. You got a plan?”

Ranger couldn’t see the expression on Daryl’s face when the man replied affirmatively, but Sean could. A thrill of dread curled up hesitantly in the Australian’s belly as he took in the black eyes that landed on Alex through the back window of the truck.


	17. Minos

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The fight to bring the family bound inside prison walls back together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guys. This. Sucks. Wow. 
> 
> I am so sorry, and editing will happen at some point in the near future but my guilt over the complete lack of updates outweighed my writer's block, so this happened. Urg. 
> 
> Thanks so much for sticking with it, fellas.

 

The ability to do terrible things shows itself in a myriad of ways. It can be worn like a uniform, like stars on a general’s lapel. It can be shouldered like a skin. It can linger like a bruise. Sometimes it prowls beneath the bones of a person, lurking like some spiny, slithering thing until it abrupt breaks out of it’s cage of ribs, blood dripping from it’s talon-like fingers.

Daryl wiped Alex’s blood from the cracks in his fingers to no avail. Open grazes on his knuckles stung and he welcomed the pain with half-closed eyes.

_“-railway cart, eastern corner! God, please, please, stop, just stop-”_

_“Wha’ did yuh do ta them?”_

_“Us first! So many of us died-we-it’s th-the, the only way to-like Crete and the Minotaur! Us first, always, forever, never trust again-”_

A Greek myth, Ranger had told Daryl, looking more and more disturbed as they began to put together what was really happening behind the razor wire of the train depot turned house of bloody, maniacal horrors.

_“You tellin’ me these sumbitches is feedin’ my people tuh some fuckin’ monster?!”_

_“Sounds like they’re going into a maze and not comin’ out awful fast. I’m not thinkin’ half-man, half-bull so much as dead uns”_

‘My people’ he’d said, like it wasn’t that big a deal. Daryl Dixon, lone wolf following his brother blindly, wounded, knowing no other path, had _people._ He had family, more blood to him that any human he’d ever shared DNA with. Rick, Michonne, Carl, Maggie, Glenn, Carol. The few who’d survived from Atlanta to the Greene’s farm to the prison and were now scattered across what felt like half of Georgia. They were _his_ people, and in that moment he’d known it with the kind of cold certainty he’d felt the first time he’d tortured a man for Rick Grimes. There was an animal inside him that they each held the key to. For them, he’d unlock the cage and let it run rampant.

Did Beth—brittle, loving, endlessly hopeful— _Beth,_ know she’d taken the man and the monster when she’d taken the ring forged from his pricked fingertips and muttered curses wrangling a piece of wire around a chip of jasper?

Daryl touched his pocket, half-turning his head as he sensed movement approaching his unprotected back.

“Hey mate” Sean greeted him before he came any closer. He cautiously side-stepped up to Daryl. The Australian had seen the animal in the misleadingly mild Southerner for the first time half an hour ago in the cellar of the undertaker’s house. “Ya got a plan or what?”

Daryl shrugged.

“Nev’r had much of a head for plannin’ shit” he grunted.

“Yeah, bullshit” retorted Sean, setting his shoulder to the trunk of a tree and narrowing his eyes at him. Daryl avoided his gaze but spoke slowly.

“I dun’ know…everyone I….-” he choked on the words _care about, love, need_ and tripped onwards. “-they migh’ be dead”

“You gunna go back to ya wife with ‘our rellies might be dead, I pussyed the fuck out, sorry darl’?” Sean snorted. Daryl stared at him blankly until he translated: “You’re not gunna tell Beth that your family might be dead so you turned your arse for home, so think of somethin’ man”

He looked away from Sean again.

“Beth ain’t my wife”

Sean snorted.

“She gave me the ring back” snapped Daryl, glaring at him.

“Were you a dick beforehand?”

The following silence was enough. Sean grinned triumphantly.

“Alrighty then. It doesn’t count. Beg her to take you back when you find her sister”

A Dixon doesn’t _beg,_ Merle thought scornfully inside Daryl’s head. They might have been scum, but their one and only point of pride was that they _took_ what they needed; they didn’t plead. A Dixon looks out for number one. Doesn’t risk their neck for newborn infants. Doesn’t put their ass on the line to feed and house strangers. Doesn’t wash their hands and leave their boots on the doormat, shave every once in a while because small, pale hands feel good on freshly shaved cheeks. Dixons fucked whores, eventually married some trailer trash bitch they’d accidently knocked up, and wasted away in a haze of drugs and booze and beating the shit out of their woman and kids.

 “They’re gunna be on high alert aft’r today. Be crazy as hell tuh try anythin’ tonight”

Sean nodded in agreement with Daryl’s observation as Maurice and Ranger approached, having stowed hog-tied, bloodied Alex in the back of the truck.

“So wait till tomorrow, when they’re not expectin’ it” said Maurice.

“Naw, wait till bit aft’r midnight, fin’ this railway car. If it’s there, if he was tellin’ the truth, then we’ll light the place up an’ git outta here”

“Wait…so, tonight? I thought you said it’d be crazy to go back tonight?”

** 

Daryl swung his upper body into the cart, looking left first and finding nothing and then turning his head right, hanging at an angle by his hands on the doorframe. The first person his eyes landed on was Carl, glaring, skinny, one eye swollen nearly shut and gloriously alive. Immediately behind him stood Michonne. He breathed a sigh of relief for Glenn and Maggie, but he didn't grin till he saw Rick stand up, strong shoulders and shadowed face.

“Some asshole order a jailbreak?” he announced.

“ _Daryl?!_ ” Rick gasped.

“Yuh know it. C'mon, Friendly, we gotta go. This everyone?” he demanded, pushing the door open wider. He got the breath knocked out of him by Rick’s bone-crushing hug and indulged in returning it for a heartbeat before shoving the man away and jamming the Python into his hand.

Their eyes met and Rick’s gaunt features seemed to fill up with the shine of moonlight off the gun’s burning steel barrel.

“Who’s this?” Daryl demanded then, gesturing to the people he didn’t recognise.

“They’re friends” said Maggie. He felt like he needed to hug her too, or something. She looked too thin, frail in a way the Greene women were not. She had Beth’s crow’s feet around her eyes, Beth’s mouth.

“Yeah…now they’re friends’ah ours” he declared firmly, grabbing the bag of guns and shucking it open, throwing a rifle to Glenn and one to Michonne. Carl grabbed two handguns and spare clips, his small fingers expertly moulding the weapons.

“For however long that’ll be” snarled a big red-head, loading an automatic.

 “Be ‘lot faster if y’all git yer asses into gear” Daryl pointed out, grabbing Carl’s shoulder and leading them out. He hefted his crossbow as they jogged towards the fence. All told there were: Michonne, Rick, Carl, Glenn, Maggie, the big red-head and hollowed, dark-haired man.

Maurice was waiting by the fence, crouched with his rifle. He looked explosively relieved to see Daryl come across the open with his bedraggled gang in tow.

“They jus’ switched guard. We better hurry” he blurted.

“The hell is this?” snarled Michonne, her hands flexing with the need to wrap around her katana.

“Good people. Go on now, git. Yuh lookin’ for a big Stetson an’ a big red truck” Daryl ordered, pointing through the gap in the fence hurriedly.

The strangers followed Glenn and Maggie out, Maurice now standing on the other side of the fence, directing them into the woods.

“Me’n’Beth got out, found Ranger an’ his. Got a place, not far, couple days. Ain’t the prison but it’s safe” Daryl whispered to Rick and Michonne. Rick nodded and put his hand on Carl’s shoulder to guide him through.

Abruptly, blindingly, it was as stark white as the noon sun, burning. Gunshots traded volleys and Rick dragged Carl to the ground, covering him as Daryl dropped to a crouch beside them. Bullets tore the ground around them.

“Go, go, go!” someone close, Maurice, shouted, grabbing Daryl’s arm and dragging him away from the fence. Two of the Terminites were shooting on the other side of the fence; Glenn stood shoulder to shoulder with the red-head, covering Maggie and the other stranger like _his_ life depended on it.

Daryl led the way at a head-bent sprint towards the cover of the buildings when bullets ripped across the concrete in front of him. He wheeled, skidding to a half-halt and trying to swing a bolt from his windmilling hand to his bow. Suddenly, Michonne’s hands were at his back, shoving him _through_ the shower of led. He shouted instinctively and ducked hard, launching himself into the lee of the closest building. Rick stood over him, firing at the sniper above them.

“Whatever way they shoot, _that’s_ the way we go, got it?” demanded Michonne, crouching beside him and then tearing him to his feet again before he could answer.

“C’mon, c’mon, this way!” shouted Carl.

They bolted down a side-alley with the hounds baying for blood at their heels. They were shoulder-to-shoulder, Rick and Daryl, as they careened to an abrupt halt between two buildings dead-ended by a stack of crates. Carl made to scramble over them, but the glint of a rifle scope was seen more with Daryl’s instincts than his own eyes and he bounded forward, reefing the boy backwards onto the hard concrete.

“Well, Ringleader, seems you’ve jumped ahead of schedule. Your people weren’t due to fight again _quite_ so soon” called a voice from above that took a moment for Daryl to place. Maurice helped Daryl and Carl to their feet, Michonne and Rick standing over them.

Mary stood on the roof, akimbo, glaring down at them.

“Where’s Gareth today, huh? We fallen out of favour or somethin’?” demanded Rick, pawing at the Python with narrowed, black eyes.

Something akin to enraged agony lanced across Mary’s face and she turned a lethal gaze upon Daryl, who grinned nastily in response, the teeth-bared snarl of a wild animal.

“How’s that asshole breathin’ wi’ a arrow in his lung, huh?”

Carl made a strangled sound of amusement.

“Uh, you’re awesome” he muttered. Daryl tried not to preen too much as Mary clicked her fingers and someone tossed down Michonne’s katana. She scurried forward and grabbed it while Rick and Carl kept their eyes to their silent watchers.

“I will have _blood_ for what you have done” the mad-eyed woman hissed.

“Blood?!-” Daryl suddenly stepped forward, in front of Rick and Michonne, out into the open, and held his arms out. Exposed, he shouted up; “You want blood? Take it from me. Let the others walk outta here”

“Daryl, _shuddup_!” snarled Rick.

Mary smiled, and Daryl’s heart hammered, his mouth dry and Beth’s ring burning a hole in his pocket. Girded in the memory of her smile and the ghost of her kiss, Daryl Dixon prepared to fight.

 

 **

 

“I take it that went well?” asked Sean, casually, his grey features betraying his absolute terror as he grabbed Maurice and tried to swallow the sound of horror crawling up his throat. Maurice moaned, semi-conscious, his left arm tapering to a bloody stump just below the elbow.

“He got bit. We got the arm off in time. Y’all okay?”

The group was standing by the truck that had just pulled into the old rendezvous point. Daryl, Rick, Michonne, Carl and Maurice had waited there, trusting that Daryl trusted Ranger would be back. It had been three days inside the Terminus maze, and on the third day…well.

They were loading their wounded into Maurice’s truck through a black haze of smoke. Terminus was alight, the flames from stockpiled gasoline cleansing the unholy ground. Daryl clapped Sean on the back and then his eyes found Glenn, standing beside him.

“Man…it’s good to see you” said the Korean feelingly, and he made an awkward, aborted gesture between a hand-shake and a hug. Daryl’s chest constricted and he grabbed the smaller man in a brief, tight embrace.

“Good to see you too, Chinaman” he muttered and then looked for Maggie amidst Glenn’s rolled eyes. To his surprise, Maggie hugged him too, stiltedly.

“Beth’s okay. She’s safe” he blurted into her shoulder and felt her nod as she withdrew.

“I know. Ranger told us-” Daryl froze, ice in his veins as he raised his eyes to search Ranger’s. The big man gave an unperceivable head-shake. “-Thank-you for lookin’ after her. _Thank-you_ ” Maggie’s voice cracked towards the end and he quickly disentagled himself with a sharp nod.

“Le’s git outta here” he said gruffly, checking on Maurice in the cab with Sean.

The tray was over-loaded with people; Maggie, Glenn, Daryl, Michonne and the Grimes’ crouched identically on guard. They all sat in stunned silence for a long time, gathering their thoughts, until finally, Maggie began to speak. She explained that Abraham and Eugene had already left for DC. She cried into Glenn’s arms as he finally told them how Sasha and Bob had given their lives to the Terminus maze. Daryl didn’t know most of the people that his friends mourned, but he listened to the eulogies brokenly offered to the wind rushing over them in the bed of a Chevy truck regardless.

Then, it was Daryl’s turn.

“I’s with Beth. We got out t’gether. I’s with her fer a while. Then, I got hurt, after the prison, tryna push north. Beth found Ranger’n them. We…there’s a reason we never tried lookin’ fer y’all. Rick, there's somethin' I gotta tell yuh, alright? An' you too, Carl, listen up man” Two sets of blue peepers full of dark things and pain squared with him. He steeled himself. “S'about Judith...”

Carl looked away, and Rick nodded, clenching his jaw.

“We know. We...we saw”

Daryl blinked in surprise, confused. Neither of them were in sight when he and Beth had taken off with Judith in tow. If they had been, this all would have turned out differently. Their expressions spoke of raw, bloody agony, not relief and acceptance. He wondered what the hell Rick thought he'd have done with a young woman and a baby in tow, and then realised that Rick didn't know anything about the baby, and quickly realised after that what they must have seen.

“Aw Jesus. Naw, that ain't...you didn't...what you saw-you-aw shit. She's alright. She's alive, Rick. Beth got to her in time. She's fine”

 

**

 

Carl had cried himself out by the time night fell. He slept on Michonne’s lap, and Maggie slept beside them. Glenn took over driving for Ranger and they carried on, Ranger taking over in the cab watching Maurice while Sean moved to the bed to sleep. The stars were burning when Daryl found himself sitting shoulder to shoulder with Rick, the only one’s awake. The older man hadn't cried when Daryl told them how Beth had found Judith, how'd they'd run and escaped and kept the baby alive against all the odds. 

“I git this feelin’ you ain’t told us everythin’” Rick broke the silence abruptly. Daryl cursed the man’s ability to read him like a book and sighed.

“I tol’ yuh everythin’ but…I jus’ left out some stuff, tha’s all”

“What stuff?”

Daryl lifted his gaze to the pine forest, thought of waking up in the early mornings when Judith was still asleep and finding Beth curled close to him in bed. He clenched his jaw and looked down.

“Had Lil Asskicker tuh watch fer. An’ I was hurt real bad, Rick. Beth…I know she was…she were doin’ everythin’ she could, but when she found Ranger and the rehab, she…she did somethin’ so damn stupid”

“Did you sleep with her?” he asked brusquely. 

“Ain’t like that!-” Daryl growled immediately. “-Put a ring on her finger so’s people we didn’t know wouldn’ ask questions and then it got real, Rick. I fell for her. Whole. Didn’t even mean to. Jesus...I messed it up with her. Messed up so bad. Told her...when I came here, tha’ I was gunna tell Range the whole thing was fake and she couldn’t believe I...dammit, _I_ can’t believe I said that to her. Bein’ wi’ her, I couldn’t tell myself it was all pretend after a while. It started so simple. It was stupid. But it was somethin’. It was enough. More’n’enough”

The words all came in a rush and Daryl thumped the back of his head against the broken down truck. Rick nodded slowly and looked at his own hands, caked in dried blood and filthy with grease and dirt. For a long time, neither of them moved.

“Yuh love her?”

“Aw, shiiiit…yeah. Reckon I do. Damn it” Daryl groaned.

Rick snorted, rubbing fingers that should have been shaking but were instead unnaturally still, over the gold circuit still worn on his ring finger. 

“Hell, I couldn’t think of two people I’d’ve trusted more tuh raise my daughter…wha’s she like?”

Judith. Lil Asskicker. The tiny, sweet soft ball of helplessness and gurgles wrapped in his vest and curled between he and Beth. The goal that bound them and united them, until it became about more than just keeping Judith safe. She was family, in a way that Daryl had never had before, and Beth was the red string that held him down when it felt like too much for him to handle.

“Perfect” summarised Daryl, closing his eyes to chase the ghost of Beth’s smile through the darkness.

 

 

 

 

 

 


	18. Betrothed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The return. The reunion. The beginning.

Every once in a while, Daryl caught a glimpse of smoke in the rear view mirror, marking the place where Terminus had once lingered, drawing in it’s victims. Rick sat beside the door, dozing fitfully before snapping into the drugged hyper-awareness of the sleep-deprived. Carl sat between them, turning his hat—Rick’s hat—over and over in his hands.  

His heart began to pound as the brick walls of the rehab rose into view.

Tommy had opened the gates. Rick just stared ahead, blank and uncomprehending while Carl made a strangled sound and clutched at his father's arm. Maurice's truck rolled in first and they followed it inside. Maggie was piling off the back before the wheels had stopped moving. Daryl didn't even get a chance to see Beth's blonde head before Maggie had enveloped her, screaming chest-racking sobs. Glenn stood by with his hands on his head, emotions flowing hot and tangled off him as a grin split his face and Beth emerged from the strangling embrace to launch herself at him. He laughed and hugged her while Maggie didn't let go of her sister's hand, head thrown back and sobbing into laughter as Beth shocked Michonne by hugging her too and then spying Carl climbing out of the other car, her eyes going wide. Daryl had to open Rick's door for him and help him out as Beth turned away from Jessie and began to walk towards them.

Judith was perched on her hip, blabbering happily.

The strangled, wounded gasp that tore out of Carl's mouth was followed by a hyperventilated exhale of _Dad!,_ the teen clawing at his father's arm for support. Rick could not respond with words. He collapsed against Daryl. Carl moved at Daryl's encouraging nod, meeting them. Beth put her hand on his shoulder, smiling softly through the residual tears still streaking her face.

“Look, baby, 'member your big brother Carl? I bet you do” she cooed.

Carl swallowed, licked his lips, wiped his hands on his jeans without taking his eyes off Judith.

“Ca-c-can I hold her?” he whispered. Immediately, Beth slid the baby into his waiting arms. The boy held her a little awkwardly, staring at her. Judith settled herself bossily and said "Ga" self-importantly.

At that, he began to sob, pressing his face into the side of her tiny neck and shoulder, sucking in uneven shudders between wet, messy keening. The awful first sound was what finally got Rick to move. He launched himself from Daryl's side towards his children, getting to Carl just as the boy's knees began to shake. Their sobs shook their whole bodies, as Carl fell apart and Rick caught him, lowering them all to the ground and encircling them both with his arms.

“Lemme see her, lemme...” Rick choked when Carl turned to bury his face in Rick's stinking shirt. Judith was happily transferred from one set of grasping, desperately happy arms to the next.

Rick held his daughter above him, forehead to forehead, her answering giggle transforming his tears into a smile that hurt his face. Salty sacrifices continued to flow down his cheeks as he wrapped her in his arms and kissed every bit of her tiny face her could reach. She squealed, tickled by his beard, longer than Daryl’s but still not unfamiliar, startling Carl from his emotionally-exhausted ball half in Rick's lap. Rick was crying in his joy, too distraught and elated to form words as Judith snagged a fistful of his hair. Carl extracted her tiny fingers from his dad's hair with a look of wonder on his face.

"Thank you. Thank you so-thank you. _Thank you_ " he murmured, voice broken and used up, the last echo breathed into Judith's hair. Carl, finally noticing their audience, got stiffly to his feet. Michonne assisted them both up: Rick held onto Judith like she was oxygen.

The Grimes' reunion had vastly overshadowed Daryl and Beth's, but they'd had their own avid audience of Maggie, Glenn , Ranger and Jessie. While Carl pushed Judith into her father's arms, Beth had looked over and seen Daryl still standing by the car.

His face was bloodied, his sleeves torn, hair falling into his face as he leaned heavily on the door, favouring his leg. He was already looking at her, eyes on her like she was the only person there and her smile was instinctive. It was all her feelings rushing outwards, and her insecurity was in the tight edges of it.

He walked towards her slowly and stopped with the ring held on the tips of his fingers between them. She stared at it, then him, uncomprehending. 

“This…it meant sumthin’ Beth, it did.  I did” he told her. She stayed silent, looking into his eyes patiently. He sighed petulantly. “Yuh gunna make me say it?”

“Say what, Daryl? I know yuh put all this stock in the strong-an’-silent thing, but sometimes a girl needs to hear-”

Whatever it was a girl sometimes needed to hear was lost then.

“I love yuh” Daryl blurted out, immediately went red and slapped a hand to the back of his neck, stared fixatedly at the ground.

Beth pressed fingers to her lips, momentarily hiding the grin that lit up the sky when she dropped them. Still red, mouth twisted and peeking at her from under the hood of his scowl, Daryl steeled himself to continue.

“I love yuh, alright, damn it. An’ I wanna marry yuh, for whatever gawddamn meanin’ s’got now. And coz yuh Daddy ain’t ‘round no more, I had tuh ask yuh sister…”

She looked around, surprised, for Maggie, and found her standing not far off, watching with her arm around Glenn and smiling through her tears.

“Well, I said _yes,_ obviously!” she exclaimed to Beth’s raised eyebrow and then pointed her finger sternly at Daryl. “Yuh do this right! Yuh promised”

Beth looked questioningly at Daryl, who huffed and shuffled his feet.

“Aw, hell…alright…here goes-” Beth squeaked as Daryl slowly got to one knee and held the ring out between them, locking eyes with her. “-Elizabeth Ruth Greene…will yuh do me the-uh-” he stumbled.

“Yes, yes, yes, oh my Lord, _yes!_ ” Beth shrieked and fell onto her knees in front of him.

A concerned frown greeted her.

“Yer ‘sposed to let me-”

He was cut off by her enthusiastic kiss, His shaky exhale was cool on her spit-slick lips as they separated. His eyes fluttered open slowly, treating Beth to the image of his ­­­­reverent features, shut lids and stubble and thin, slack lips.

“-finish” he breathed out unsteadily as he unlocked his blue, blue eyes and saw her grinning at him.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You had better cry. I cried writing it. Send me your tears in a bottle so I don’t feel like such a loser, k? K. 
> 
> So, there is one more chapter PLANNED, plus the missing scenes from the godawful thing that is the previous chapter, but who know's when I'll get to that. Jeeeezzz, I'm sorry guys. Hope you got some semeblance of enjoyment from this crap regardless. 
> 
> Also, just as an aside, I haven't seen anything more than GIFS and stills from the new season and they're mostly just JUDITHWHATTHEFUCK-BETH-IS-BAD-ASS-DARYLREADSBOOKSNOW!!!!!!!!!!!!! so, forgive anything that seems completely out of left field or whatever. My personal theory about Terminus (NO SPOILERS IF YOU CAN HELP IS PLLLEEAASSEEE) is that they've got some kind of sacrificial-gladiator vibe going on, hence the whole Minotaur subtext I had going on there. 
> 
> Alrighty, I got jackeroos to wrangle. Cheers!


End file.
